C. S. Lewis
A Guide to His
Theology
David G. Clark
C. S. Lewis
My thanks to Cindy B., who first introduced
me to Lewis,
who in turned changed my life,
and now threatens to take over what I teach!
And to Rose, who helped in so many ways.
My lasting gratitude.
C. S. Lewis
A Guide to His
Theology
David G. Clark
ß 2007 by David G. Clark
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First published 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1
2007
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Clark, David George, 1943–
C.S. Lewis : a guide to his theology / by David G. Clark.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-5883-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-4051-5884-8
(pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898–1963—Religion. I. Title.
BX5199.L53C53 2007
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Contents
List of Abbreviations
Lewis’s Works
Books of the Bible
viii
viii
xi
Introduction
Lewis and Scripture
The Strengths of Lewis
Lewis the Apologist and Mentor
1
3
4
10
1
14
16
16
18
20
22
23
24
30
From Atheist to Apologist
Growing Up
Lewis in School
Lewis at Oxford
The Path to Faith
The Christian Lewis
Lewis as Prophet
Lewis as Evangelist
Lewis as Believer and Mentor
vi Contents
2
Lewis Looks at His World
Aesthetics and Morality in the ‘‘Green Book’’
Aesthetics and Morality in That Hideous Strength
Aesthetics and God in Reflections on the Psalms
Lewis at Cambridge
The Post-Christian West
The Christian Viewpoint
The Hidden Influence
Lewis and Science
32
34
37
40
41
43
46
48
51
3
Lewis Reaches Out to His World
The Redemption Story: Lewis’s Subtle Approach
The redemption story in The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe
The redemption story in Perelandra
The myth that entered history
The Redemption Story: Lewis’s Direct Approach
God’s Life in Us
56
58
59
66
71
73
76
4
Humanity in God’s Creation
The Making of Humanity
Humans and Animals
Animals in the Space Trilogy
The Biblical mandate
Humans and Angels
Fallen angels
Good angels
Between Animals and Angels
81
82
85
88
94
98
98
102
104
5
Walking by Faith
The Myth of Cupid and Psyche
According to Apuleius
The Myth According to Lewis
105
107
108
Contents
The Meaning of the Myth
Natural affection
The importance of faith
Reconciling faith and sight
6
God’s Plan for the Soul
The Goal of Sanctification
The Concept of Purgatory
The Descent of Christ in The Great Divorce
The Theology of Purgatory in Seven Principles
The Descent of Christ in Scripture
Applying the Seven Principles
Will all be saved?
Is there a second chance?
Beyond space and time
Responding to truth
Purgatory in Scripture
Summary
vii
116
116
118
119
122
124
126
129
131
134
138
138
141
142
143
147
148
7 God’s Plan for the Body – and the Universe
Resurrection of the Body
Resurrection and Creation
Judgment by Fire
The Face of God
150
151
153
157
160
Conclusion: The Legacy of Lewis
Did Lewis Pass the Test?
The Impact of Lewis
A Theology of Redemption
164
164
167
168
Bibliography
Index
170
172
Abbreviations
Lewis’s Works
AOM
BOX
CR
CLII
FL
GD
The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education with
Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the
Upper Forms of Schools. New York: Macmillan,
1955 (1943).
Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C. S.
Lewis. Walter Hooper, ed. San Diego: Harcourt
Brace, 1986 (1985).
Christian Reflections. Walter Hooper, ed. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975 (1967).
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Books, Broadcasts,
and the War 1931–1949. Vol. II. Walter Hooper,
ed. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2004.
The Four Loves. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1988
(1960).
The Great Divorce: A Dream. New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1996 (1946).
List of Abbreviations ix
GID
GO
HHB
L
LAL
LB
LTM
LWW
M
MC
MN
OOW
OSP
P
PC
God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics.
Walter Hooper, ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2001 (1979).
A Grief Observed. By N. W. Clerk (Pseudonym).
New York: Seabury Press, 1961.
The Horse and His Boy. Book 5. New York: Collier
Books, 1977 (1954).
Letters of C. S. Lewis. Revised and Enlarged Edition. Walter Hooper, ed. San Diego: Harcourt
Brace, 1993 (1966).
Letters to an American Lady (Mary Willis Shelburne). Clyde S. Kilby, ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967.
The Last Battle: A Story for Children. Book 7. New
York: Collier Books, 1977 (1956).
Letters to Malcomb: Chiefly on Prayer. San Diego:
Harcourt Brace, 1964.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: A Story for
Children. Book 1. New York: Collier Books, 1977
(1950).
Miracles: A Preliminary Study. New York: Macmillan, 1965 (1947).
Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan, 1960
(1952).
The Magician’s Nephew. Book 6. New York: Collier
Books, 1977 (1955).
Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories. Walter Hooper,
ed. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1966.
Out of the Silent Planet. New York: Macmillan,
1965 (1938).
Poems. Walter Hooper, ed. San Diego: Harcourt
Brace, 1992 (1964).
Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia. Book 2. New
York: Collier Books, 1977 (1951).
x List of Abbreviations
PER
PP
PR
ROP
SBJ
SC
SL&SPT
SLE
SMRL
THS
TWHF
VDT
WG
WLN
Perelandra. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003
(1943).
The Problem of Pain: How Human Suffering Raises
Almost Intolerable Intellectual Problems. New York:
Macmillan, 1962 (1940).
The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for
Christianity, Reason and Romanticism. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977 (1933).
Reflections on the Psalms. New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1958.
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. New
York: Harcourt Brace, 1955.
The Silver Chair. Book 4. New York: Collier
Books, 1977 (1953).
The Screwtape Letters with Screwtape Proposes a
Toast. Revised Edition. New York: Macmillan,
1982 (1942).
Selected Literary Essays. Walter Hooper, ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980
(1969).
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Collected by Walter Hooper. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1979 (1966).
That Hideous Strength. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996 (1945).
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. San Diego:
Harcourt Brace, 1984 (1956).
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Book 3. New
York: Collier Books, 1977 (1952).
The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. San Francisco: Harper Collins, Zondervan, 2001 (1949).
The World’s Last Night and Other Essays. New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973 (1960).
List of Abbreviations xi
Books of the Bible
Biblical quotations are from the New Revised Standard
Version.
Gen
Exo
Lev
Num
Deut
2 Chron
Psa
Isa
Jer
Ezek
Dan
Matt
Mark
Luke
John
Acts
Rom
1 Cor
2 Cor
Eph
Phil
Col
1 Thess
2 Thess
1 Tim
2 Tim
Heb
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
2 Chronicles
Psalms
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Ezekiel
Daniel
Matthew
Romans
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
1 Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Hebrews
xii
List of Abbreviations
James
1 Pet
2 Pet
1 John
Rev
1 Peter
2 Peter
Revelation
Introduction
Another book about C. S. Lewis? Well, yes, because there is
still more to say. Those who have written before me have (in
many cases) carefully uncovered the facts of his life and his
professional accomplishments. I applaud their many contributions. Now, it’s time to add to them with a comprehensive
overview of his theological views. If this is your first encounter
with Lewis, you’ll discover just how interesting (and brilliant)
he was. And if you have already read many of his books, there
will still be some surprises along the way.
I mentioned that there is still more to say, so let me explain
my plans for this book. By occupation, I have been a college,
seminary, and university professor of New Testament and
Greek for more than thirty years. But I also have an ‘‘academic
hobby’’; I’ve been privileged to teach courses on the life and
thought of Lewis during that time. By ‘‘thought’’ I mean
mostly his theology rather than his contributions to the field
of English literature, since theology is my field of choice and
professional contributions.
2 Introduction
As I have discussed Lewis with my students over the years, it
has become obvious to me that although Lewis was not a
theologian by profession, that keen mind of his probed into
just about every ‘‘corner’’ of the Bible, as he struggled (as all
thoughtful believers do) to understand what he found there.
He pondered the miracles of the Bible and the life and redemptive work of Christ. He probed into the life of the soul between
death and resurrection, and speculated about the form our
resurrected bodies might take. He discussed humanity in relation to animals, other humans, and even angels; both good
and fallen. And this is only a partial list.
Nor were his interests only intellectual. To his credit, Lewis
showed himself to be a Christian who regularly came to the
Scriptures for spiritual nourishment. Douglas Gresham,
Lewis’s stepson, recalls Lewis faithfully reading the Bible
every day. Lewis wrote that he didn’t mind taking a slow
train that stopped in every station because it gave him time
to read and pray. Using what he learned by study and experience, he mentored others who shared his faith, giving encouragement, insights, warnings, and advice.
Finally, Lewis not only studied, believed, and lived the Scriptures, he applied what he understood to his world. Whether the
subject was the history of the world, human nature, modern
science, space travel, whether major or minor topics, the Bible
provided the lens through which he understood everything.
And so I’d like to ‘‘come alongside’’ Lewis to throw some light
upon his insights into the Bible and their implications. Just as a
knowledge of English literature is necessary to understand the
‘‘academic’’ Lewis, a more-than-passing familiarity with the
Scriptures is also required for his many theological works.
And the need for a Biblical background is particularly important
because the Bible is by far the most influential source for the
‘‘religious’’ Lewis, and because most people today who read
Lewis read the ‘‘religious’’ Lewis.
Introduction 3
Lewis and Scripture
Perhaps this would be the best place for a brief autobiographical note. I’ve devoted my life to Biblical scholarship because I
personally hold the Scriptures to be the Word of God, not the
writings of Lewis. So why am I ‘‘leaving,’’ in a sense, the
divinely inspired Scriptures to study and write about the
beliefs of a ‘‘mere human?’’ Because Lewis has helped so
many (including me) better understand the Bible in such a
way that his readers come away more resolved to live as
Christians, no matter what the cost.
There is another reason I have taken this approach. When
Lewis wrote for other Christians, he freely referred to Scriptures
and often directly quoted them. But when he reached out to
non-believers in books like the Ransom Trilogy or The Chronicles
of Narnia, he was much more subtle in his use of the Bible. He
knew such readers would avoid anything that was overtly
theological, so why scare them away? But the Bible is still
there, if disguised, and I intend to bring it out into the open.
Finally, and I need to be careful here, Lewis often went
further than the Bible. By this I mean he often brings together
Bible verses that speak to a subject and then, using both logic
and imagination in ways that are consistent with Christian
theology, develops the implications of things the Bible only
hints at. For example, Paul wrote that all creation, groaning
under the consequences of sin, is waiting for ‘‘the revealing of
the children of God,’’ and one day will obtain the freedom of
those children (Rom 8:18–23). But does Paul believe there is a
cause and effect relationship between the revealing of God’s
people and creation being liberated? He doesn’t say, but Lewis
certainly believes so, and has much to say about it. In such
cases I believe I can explain the complexity of his insights, and
also show how they interpret the Scriptures.
4 Introduction
The Strengths of Lewis
Turning from the theology of Lewis to his writings in general,
what strengths do his letters, poetry, articles, and books reveal?
Why do his writings continue to sell in numbers that make most
authors envious? Why are there more than two hundred Lewis
societies that exist to discuss his works? Well, not necessarily in
order of importance, here are some points that come to mind.
Lewis not only had something to say on just about any topic,
he had a gift for putting his thoughts into words. He is universally praised on that score, even by those who don’t agree with
his views. I don’t mean that everyone understands everything
he said, because he frequently refers to older books that many
people today haven’t read. He also had a tremendous vocabulary that sends many readers to their dictionaries for help. But
even those who can’t follow all his references agree that he
expressed himself clearly and succinctly. He even wrote to
children – he was comfortable on their level, and he made
them feel comfortable.
In addition to clarity, Lewis often used humor and wit when
he explained his views about Christian beliefs and conduct.
But they didn’t cheapen his theology, and they have held the
interest of many readers who wouldn’t otherwise have gotten
very far. When Lewis wrote The Screwtape Letters, humor was
indispensable in helping him avoid a gloomy and depressing
atmosphere as Screwtape explains the techniques of temptation and boasts of his successes in guiding his former
‘‘patients’’ into Hell. But throw in some humorous sounding
names (Wormwood, Triptweze) and situations (Wormwood
getting intoxicated because war has broken out, or Screwtape
losing his cool at Wormwood’s ineptitude and turning into a
centipede!) and the book becomes not only bearable, but a
widely enjoyed Christian classic.
Introduction
5
Next, Lewis found room for the imagination in theology. In
fact he described The Screwtape Letters as ‘‘ethics served with an
imaginative seasoning’’ (‘‘Letter to Dr. Wendell W. Watters’’
in L: 413, 25 October 1951). Lewis demonstrates that humor
and imagination can be compatible with a reverent approach
to Scripture and to one’s relationship with God. In most cases,
the Bible does not give structured, well-developed explanations of doctrines. Also, symbols and metaphors need to
be interpreted and modern readers need help understanding
ancient viewpoints from cultures that were very different from
modern western cultures. The strength of Lewis is that he used
his imagination to bridge different cultures and to envision
how many Biblical prophecies might be fulfilled.
His imagination also helped his readers get ‘‘outside’’ of
themselves so they could see themselves and their world
from a different perspective. This gift of Lewis – to look at things
from different sides and to help us do the same – is so important (but often overlooked by his admirers) that I need to
devote a little extra space to it here in the introduction. In
1945, Lewis was invited to address a group of Anglican priests
and youth leaders in Carmarthen, Wales, on the subject of
apologetics. He began on a humble note, typical for him: ‘‘I’m
not qualified to address people like you,’’ and then went on to
give very sound and useful advice.
The topic of perspective was a prominent theme in his
advice to them. Since they were to serve the church as apologists for the faith, they would be pulled in two different
directions: were they keeping up with recent developments
in theology, and were they standing firm in the faith? The
second, for Lewis, was far more important.
Our upbringing and the whole atmosphere of the world we live
in make it certain that our main temptation will be that of
yielding to winds of doctrine, not that of ignoring them. We
6 Introduction
are not at all likely to be hidebound: we are very likely indeed
to be slaves of fashion. If one has to choose between reading the
new books and reading the old, one must choose the old: not
because they are necessarily better but because they contain
precisely those truths of which our own age is neglectful. The
standard of permanent Christianity must be kept clear in our
minds and it is against that standard that we must test all
contemporary thought. (‘‘Christian Apologetics’’ in GID: 92)
Lewis is actually making two points here. Apologists need to
keep in mind the orthodox beliefs of historical Christianity
because they provide the perspective needed to judge the
soundness of new expressions of doctrines and conduct. But
the more general principle is that older books help us see our
world through the eyes of those who saw the world much
differently than we do. Lewis felt the value of older books so
strongly that he wrote a separate article just to make this point.
Every age has its own outlook. It is especially good at seeing
certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We
all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic
mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books . . .
The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by
reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about
the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they
made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. (‘‘On
the Reading of Old Books’’ in GID: 202)
Humor, imagination, and perspective all combine when Lewis
writes from the point of view of Herodotus (an ancient Greek
historian) trying to understand the strange Christmas customs of
the foreign land of Niatirb (Britain spelled backward.):
And when they find cards from any to whom they also have
sent cards, they throw them away and give thanks to the gods
Introduction 7
that this labour at least is over for another year. But when they
find cards from any to whom they have not sent, then they beat
their breasts and wail and utter curses against the sender; and,
having sufficiently lamented their misfortune, they put on their
boots again and go out into the fog and rain and buy a card
for him also. And let this account suffice about Exmas-cards.
(‘‘Xmas and Christmas’’ in GID: 302)
Through Ransom’s adventures on Mars (Out of the Silent
Planet) and Venus (Perelandra), both unfallen planets in this
fictional series, Lewis can show just how fallen earth really is.
When Ransom arrives on Venus and cautiously tries one of the
fruits he finds there, the taste is beyond delicious. ‘‘For one
draught of this on earth wars would be fought and nations
betrayed’’ (PER: 37). The Screwtape Letters provides yet another
way to view humanity: from the perspective of fallen angels,
or devils. Yes, Lewis really does believe that Satan and other
angels, in revolt against God, have joined in common purpose
through the motivations of fear and greed to frustrate God’s
purposes by leading as many humans as possible away from
him. Lewis certainly could have written a ‘‘normal’’ book of
practical advice for Christian living as many others have, but
letting us see things from Satan’s perspective is so new and
effective that he has created a classic.
As Lewis examined God’s creation he realized that humans
have much in common with animals as well as angels. Chapter
four of this book will focus upon the insights into humanity
that Lewis found by looking ‘‘up’’ from the perspective of
animals. He often used the technique of ‘‘humanizing’’ them
to do this, and this adds to the enjoyment of his stories. After
all, people all over the world bring some animals into their
homes, give them names, clothes, etc. In The Chronicles of
Narnia, Jesus himself comes in the form of a lion. The beavers
help the children escape the Queen and find Aslan, and note
8 Introduction
the title of the fifth book of the series: The Horse and His Boy.
The animals in The Chronicles, sad to say, often conduct themselves more wisely and kindly than do the humans.
Lewis even offered himself as a ‘‘specimen’’ with a valuable
perspective, as chapter two will show. The educational philosophy in Britain was changing (and the same could be said
about America), so that the Greek and Roman classics which,
with the Scriptures, are the foundation of western civilization,
were disappearing from the curriculum. The Christian faith
which had influenced the values and institutions of western
countries for more than a millennium was being replaced by
science and technology in a post-Christian Europe. Lewis
knew he was defending a losing cause.
And many other changes were occurring, and with increasing speed; changes in politics, poetry, the arts, and, of course,
technology. The latter, in fact, had become so dominant in the
West that now the assumption was that science, especially
medicine, not Christianity, would provide the solutions to
life’s problems. Lewis knew that other times had also seen
significant changes, such as the fall of the Roman Empire,
but he argued in his inaugural Cambridge address that the
changes that began around the time of 1800 were greater
than any before. He concluded that address with the statement
that his education placed him on the earlier side of that ‘‘great
divide,’’ making him a dinosaur (yes, he used that word); a
member of a species that would soon be extinct. As a ‘‘dinosaur’’ Lewis put forward himself (much as an old book) as
someone with a useful perspective on history; he could see
the vast changes that others could not.
The ability Lewis had to ‘‘stand back’’ and see his world from
different perspectives, often by using older books, helped him
distance himself from his own times. Lewis thereby saw things
in their larger context; he viewed the forest instead of individual trees. When he sought to understand his world, he stood
Introduction 9
back and surveyed the ages leading up to the twentieth century. Had he studied only his century, the unprecedented
changes around him would have gone unnoticed. When he
studied himself and humanity in general, as we will see in
chapter four, he included the animals below us in creation and
the angels above us. And once again, the larger context led to
significant discoveries for the future of humanity.
Lewis expressed this variety of perspectives well because
he had a great vocabulary at his command, extending even
beyond the English language. In fact, he corresponded in Latin
with two Italian priests. In his mother tongue, he also had a
natural gift of using his vocabulary to communicate abstract
concepts. Metaphors abound in his writing and the mental
pictures they create greatly assist the reader. In one sense,
Lewis had no choice but to use metaphorical language. Theology often treats subjects such as Heaven and Hell that are not
perceived by the physical senses; yet the only language we
have is the language of our physical world (MC: 74). Metaphor
bridges this gap, using concrete terms to better explain abstract
concepts. Lewis was a master of the skill of choosing apt and
useful metaphors, and also grasping (note that ‘‘grasping’’ is a
metaphor; one doesn’t seize an idea with the hand) what Bible
metaphors reveal about God.
For example, after describing how learning more and more
about Norse legends did not bring him the joy he experienced
from them earlier in life, he adds: ‘‘I woke from building the
temple to find that the God had flown’’ (SBJ: 165). Or when
Lewis wanted to explain how God has left his influence upon
the universe, he hit upon the idea of a postman leaving
packets at each house. When we open the one addressed
to us, we find the moral law that seeks to direct our actions,
and so we can conclude that the other packets also contain
letters of instructions – for example, the law of gravity which
material objects must obey (MC: 19). Such comparisons are
10 Introduction
sprinkled throughout his writings, and surely number in the
hundreds.
Lewis not only could express himself well, he had a lot to
say. His learning (and memory) was extensive, to say the least.
He knew the important works of English literature from the
inception of the English language. Philosophy was familiar
territory. He studied Greek, Latin, and Scandinavian mythologies, and usually in their original languages. After his conversion, though he would be the first to say he was an amateur
theologian, he made excellent progress in his study of the
Scriptures, as his theological books attest. He seems to have
read just about everything, and remembered almost everything he read! His autobiography (Surprised by Joy) recounts
the first half of his life, and by then he has already read many
more books than most ‘‘normal’’ people would ever read in
a lifetime.
All of these strengths (and others that I haven’t mentioned)
in combination help explain the contributions that Lewis has
bequeathed to his readers. He had important insights into the
history of English literature, which I’ll leave for others in that
field to explain. He defended, with even more insights, the
Christian faith. Perhaps even more importantly, he explained
Christianity in ways that just about anyone can understand.
And because he kept to the central doctrines, or ‘‘mere Christianity’’ as he liked to call it, Christians of many different
denominations (or none at all) are able to enjoy and benefit
from what he had to say.
Lewis the Apologist and Mentor
But just who did Lewis have in mind as he defended and
explained? On the one hand, he wrote to reach his postChristian readers who thought that Christianity had been
Introduction 11
tried in the past and found wanting. Not so, he argued; it’s the
one faith that really makes sense of this world. On the other
hand, he defended the faith against those he called ‘‘liberal
Christians.’’ ‘‘They genuinely believe that writers of my sort
are doing a great deal of harm’’ (LTM: 118).
If Christianity is to survive, they would argue, it must be
demythologized, which really comes down to getting rid of the
miraculous. Miracles just won’t fly in a modern, scientific
society that has moved past such primitive explanations of
how and why things happen as they do.
It follows that, to them, the most mischievous people in the
world are those who, like myself, proclaim that Christianity
essentially involves the supernatural. They are quite sure that
belief in the supernatural never will, nor should, be revived,
and that if we convince the world that it must choose between
accepting the supernatural and abandoning all pretence of
Christianity, the world will undoubtedly choose the second
alternative. It will thus be we, not the liberals, who have really
sold the pass. We shall have reattached to the name Christian a
deadly scandal from which, but for us, they might have succeeded in decontaminating it. (LTM: 119)
Lewis is not the first to discover that the enemies of the
gospel sometimes come from within the church itself, and
like the apostles and fathers of the church before him, he
took up the cause of defending the faith. To remove the
supernatural, he argued, is to take away the power of the
message as well, since the faith stands upon such doctrines as
the creation, the incarnation, the resurrection, and the Second
Coming – miraculous all. ‘‘By the way,’’ Lewis adds, ‘‘did you
ever meet, or hear of, anyone who was converted from skepticism to a ‘‘liberal’’ or ‘‘demythologized’’ Christianity? I think
that when unbelievers come in at all, they come in a good deal
further’’ (LTM: 119).
12 Introduction
Nobody would compare Lewis to someone like Billy Graham
who has invited millions to the faith, but Lewis did want to see
people converted. In his own way, he was an evangelist,
offering a ‘‘real’’ gospel that liberals could not. He pointed
people to Christ with gentleness, logic, and simplicity. He
knew that many of his contemporaries would never knowingly pick up a book on theology. And if they did, they
wouldn’t be able to understand it.
When I began, Christianity came before the great mass of my
unbelieving fellow-countrymen either in the highly emotional
form offered by revivalists or in the unintelligible language
of highly cultured clergymen. Most men were reached by neither. My task was therefore simply that of a translator – one
turning Christian doctrine, or what he believed to be such, into
the vernacular, into language that unscholarly people would
attend to and could understand. (‘‘Rejoinder to Dr. Pittenger’’
in GID: 183)
As a ‘‘translator,’’ Lewis explained the logic of Christian
doctrines in a series of radio addresses, later published as
Mere Christianity, one of the most successful apologetic works
of the twentieth century. He even was willing to visit workers
in a factory during lunch time and answer their questions
about religion (‘‘Answers to Christianity’’ in GID: 48–62).
Lewis was also a ‘‘smuggler’’ of Christianity, bringing Biblical truths into his imaginative books under the guise of
science fiction (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That
Hideous Strength). He also used the power of story, or myth,
which has had universal appeal in all cultures at all times
and places in the history of the world, in The Chronicles of
Narnia. The first volume of The Chronicles, The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe, recounts the redemption work of Christ in
an imaginary world, just as Perelandra does on the planet
Venus.
Introduction 13
Finally, Lewis not only led people to faith, including Joy
Davidman Gresham, the woman who would become his wife;
he mentored and encouraged them in their new walk with
God. Only God knows how many people wrote him with their
problems and questions, and Lewis was careful to respond to
each, even while coping with a very busy schedule, many
interruptions in the household, illnesses, and eventually
arthritis in the fingers and other physical problems. And yet
Lewis undertook even more ‘‘correspondence.’’ In the name
of Screwtape, Lewis revealed the pitfalls of the enemy each
believer must face in a series of imaginary letters. To a fictional
person named Malcomb, Lewis again wrote letters to instruct
new believers in spiritual disciplines, particularly the prayer
life.
So, taking all these ingredients into account yields the recipe
known as Lewis. Take one English professor and add large
amounts of history, Scripture, and literature. Stir in religious
experiences and mix well. Let the mixture simmer for several
decades, while serving up various portions on hundreds of
paper pages. Season mixture well with wit and humor, and
generously sprinkle in metaphors before serving. Let’s enjoy!
Chapter 1
From Atheist to Apologist
‘‘Lucy looks into the wardrobe for the first time.’’
Illustration ß 2007 by Deborah Wilson Camp
From Atheist to Apologist
15
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not
only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
(‘‘Is Theology Poetry?’’ in WG: 140)
Once upon a time, far out into the country, there lived an old
Professor in a large house. He had no wife, but he didn’t live
alone. A housekeeper and three servants fixed the meals,
tended the garden, and kept the cobwebs away (well, most
of them). But when the war came, even more people came to
live there. You see, the enemy sent up rockets that came down
upon the city of London. They weren’t aimed very well, but
they still killed many people and scared everyone since no one
knew where the next one might explode. So sensible (and
brave) people did the sensible thing; they sent their children
out into the country to live with kind folk who would take
them in for a time.
Most professors are kind folk, and the Professor in the big
house was no exception. And so, four more people came to
live with the four who were already there. The names of the
children were Lucy (the youngest), Edmund (next youngest),
who found the Professor so funny looking when they first met
he had to pretend to be blowing his nose to hide his laughter,
Susan, and Peter. It wasn’t long before they set off to explore
their new surroundings . . . but I’m sure you already know the
story about how Lucy discovered Narnia in the back of a
wardrobe in one of the spare rooms.
Well, perhaps C. S. Lewis didn’t live in such an enormous
house, but he was a professor, his own godson did find him
amusing to look at, he did live out in the country, and children
did come to stay with him for their protection during World
War II. One of them even remembers climbing out of a window,
joining Lewis on the sly, and heading off to town together for
some fish and chips when there hadn’t been enough dinner!
16 From Atheist to Apologist
Growing Up
Just how did a scholarly English professor with no children of
his own come to write seven books for them? The explanation
begins, logically enough, when he was a child himself. Both
Jack (so he wished to be called) and his brother Warren found
drawing pictures easier than making things since they inherited
thumbs with only one joint. Warren liked cars and trains while
Jack drew ‘‘dressed animals’’ (SBJ: 6), and their pictures soon
led to stories, then stories with history, next geography, including maps (SBJ: 13–14). Looking back at these early years, Lewis
recalls: ‘‘I was living almost entirely in my imagination . . . I was
training myself to be a novelist.’’ (SBJ: 15. Walter Hooper has
edited these childhood stories and published them as Boxen: The
Imaginary World of the Young C. S. Lewis.)
In many ways, these childhood years were the most idyllic
of Lewis’s life. Life at home approached the ideal. Albert’s
successful law practice meant the family was spared financial
worry, and later enabled him to send the boys to boarding
schools. Indeed, even at Oxford, Jack continued to received
regular support from his father. The stability of the family
centered around his mother, who had a ‘‘talent for happiness’’
and a cool, logical mind; the perfect counterbalance for the
warm, emotional Welsh nature of his father (SBJ: 3). The close
bond between Jack and Warren, and the presence of Lizzie
Endicott, their nurse who was good to the core, only added to
the happiness in the home.
Lewis in School
Of course, Jack and his brother Warnie (Warren) had more to
do than just write and draw pictures. Their parents were
From Atheist to Apologist
17
educated and believed in giving their children the same foundation. Before he reached the age of ten, Jack was already
learning Greek and Latin from his mother and other tutors.
But when she came down with cancer and soon died in 1908,
the first great tragedy came to the little family. Jack believed
that God had failed him by not answering his prayers for the
recovery of his mother. And his father did not know how to
manage his own grief well enough to help his sons through
their loss, so a separation developed there as well. It was Jack
and Warnie against the world. Finally, the death of his mother
left a scar that would take years to heal: the biographers tell us
that the grief and fear Jack felt when he saw his mother’s
corpse led to a fear of emotion itself. Only much later did he
realize that the heart was often quicker to grasp meaning than
the mind.
Fortunately, these experiences did not prevent Jack’s education from going forward, even if the schools his father sent
him to were not always the best. In fact, the first boarding
school (which Lewis later called ‘‘Belsen,’’ the name of a
concentration camp) closed soon after the headmaster was
certified as insane. Fortunately, Jack, after many pleas to his
father, had already been removed from Wynyard and sent to
another school. And yet, looking back, he had to admit that he
had benefited from kind teachers who had really cared for
their students, and from being sent to churches led by pastors
who really did believe in the doctrines of the church and
preached them openly from the pulpit.
One might conclude from these circumstances that Jack
came to hate school even while he was being confirmed in
his faith, but that wasn’t the case. He did continue to develop
intellectually (though school environments were often
extremely uncomfortable to him, especially the emphasis
upon sports and the way the older students exploited the
younger), but the sermons he heard convinced him that he
18
From Atheist to Apologist
could never measure up to God’s standards. So when the
matron at Cherbourg, his third school, exposed him to occultism, he willingly abandoned his faith for the freedom of believing in ‘‘spirit’’ with no moral strings attached.
This trend of increasing intellectual development with a
corresponding spiritual decay continued under W. T. Kirkpatrick, who had already helped Warren prepare for entrance to
the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. Jack affectionately
called him ‘‘the Great Knock’’ and from him he learned to
speak and think carefully, skills that stood him in good stead
for the rest of his life. He also adopted his mentor’s atheism.
(Although to his credit, Kirkpatrick did put on a better suit
when he worked in his garden on Sundays!)
Lewis at Oxford
His studies in Kirkpatrick’s home (Jack was the only student)
included more Greek and Latin, plus French, German, and
Italian, not to mention English literature. All this curriculum
was meant to prepare him for Oxford, and Kirkpatrick succeeded. Jack was admitted to that prestigious university in
1917 and excelled in the comprehensive examinations that
marked the middle (1920) and the end (1922) of his Literae
Humaniores; a four year degree program in the Greek and
Roman classics, philosophy, and ancient history. He then
took top honors the very next year in English language and
literature, a degree program that usually required two years
(Hooper, C. S. Lewis. A Companion and Guide: 771).
Lewis doesn’t say nearly as much about these studies at
Oxford compared to his earlier schools, so his experiences
there must have been more positive. But he did recall being
so tired that death seemed an attractive option at the time.
And his time at Oxford was complicated by the fact that he
From Atheist to Apologist
19
began his studies there just as World War I got underway. As a
citizen of Ireland, he didn’t have to enlist, but felt it was his
patriotic duty. While waiting for orders, he became friends
with his roommate Edward ‘‘Paddy’’ Moore, whose divorced
mother Janie and twelve year old sister Maureen lived nearby.
Lewis greatly enjoyed their company, and during a visit just
before being sent to the front, promised to look after them if
anything happened to Paddy.
They were sent to France in 1917, where Paddy was killed in
action, after fighting very bravely, being wounded, captured,
escaping, and finally shot again, this time fatally. Lewis
honored his promise, and Mrs. Moore was in his care for the
rest of her life. Jack experienced ‘‘trench fever,’’ recovered
after three weeks, returned to the front, was hit by shrapnel
in four different places (Hooper, C. S. Lewis: 11). He was later to
recall that while being treated in France, champagne was the
only thing he could stomach for a time. But after regaining his
health, he found he had lost all taste for it for the rest of
his life.
But what could Lewis do with all that education, not to
mention a woman in her forties, her daughter, a cook, and a
maid? Kirkpatrick had praised Lewis in a letter to his father as
one of the most brilliant students he had ever tutored, but also
commented that he didn’t see many career options for him
except in an academic setting. Providentially, Lewis was asked
to fill in for one of his tutors who was away for a year, and
after that, he was offered a position teaching English in Magdalene College (Hooper, C. S. Lewis: 12–13). Lewis realized
English suited his temperament better than philosophy, and
English language and literature became his academic ‘‘home’’
until his retirement.
A fertile imagination, love of stories, anthropomorphic animals, a mind of unusual capacity – the raw materials were all
there. They would be enriched by an education stretching
20
From Atheist to Apologist
from Lewis’s own time to the origin of the English language;
and farther back still to ancient Greece and Rome, whose
literature is the foundation of western civilization. And his
education enabled Lewis to read all these in their original
languages. Few students today, even those from wealthy families, are able to enjoy the opportunities that helped shape
Lewis. But all these needed a catalyst to bring them together
and give them direction. And that catalyst was the Christian
faith. But what persuaded Lewis to leave the atheism of his
late teens and twenties?
The Path to Faith
Lewis’s journey to faith has been thoroughly examined by
several biographers (I especially recommend Downing’s book
The Most Reluctant Convert), so a summary here will suffice.
Imagine a shopper picking up a new electronic device of
some sort, carefully inspecting it to see how it works, its
features, etc., and then deciding it’s not quite what he needs.
This, figuratively speaking, is what Lewis was doing with the
philosophies of his time. To his credit, he really wanted to
know the meaning of life. He was searching in all the wrong
places, but he was searching, and each wrong ‘‘article’’ at least
showed him where the answers wouldn’t be found.
Romanticism gave way to Kirkpatrick’s rationalism for a
time, then the lure of the occult tugged at him once more,
but the fear of ghosts and who knows what else drove him
back in the direction of materialism, where there was nothing
supernatural to fear. Meanwhile, MacDonald’s Phantastes
brought to him the ‘‘bright shadow’’ of holiness; ‘‘for the
first time the song of the sirens sounded like the voice of my
mother or my nurse’’ (SBJ: 179). And Chesterton (The Everlasting Man) chimed in with the logic of holiness. His defenses
From Atheist to Apologist
21
were being broken down and Lewis began to wonder if the
defense of his atheism was a lost cause.
As Lewis came to know many of his fellow students
and then faculty colleagues at Oxford, some of them became
instrumental in his journey to faith. Lewis credited Owen
Barfield for exposing his ‘‘chronological snobbery,’’ meaning
his tendency to accept the latest trends in thought while
assuming that what is no longer in vogue must have been
discredited (SBJ: 207). Another student, Nevill Coghill, stood
out as the most intelligent and well-informed student in a
discussion class, and yet was a Christian. Another attack
came from a most unexpected direction; the most hard-boiled
atheist Lewis ever knew exclaimed during a visit to Lewis’s
room that the evidence for the historicity of the gospels was
very strong. Lewis was shaken . . . if this person had to own up
to the facts (though he never did become a believer), was there
something to Christianity after all?
The next step, oddly enough, came on a bus. Lewis felt he
was standing before a door, and was free to open it or not. God
offered no promises for either choice; he revealed no consequences. Lewis chose to open it. Not long after, in the Trinity
Term of 1929, he knelt and admitted that God indeed did exist.
Two more years passed before the deist Lewis became the
Christian Lewis, and Lewis himself wrote that he was not
sure why his belief in Jesus as the Christ came when it did;
on a motorcycle ride with Warren to the Whipsnade zoo on
September 28, 1931. (How fast was his brother driving?!) The
rest is mystery; the biographers can only uncover so much.
The conversion of Lewis was a wonderful event; as is the
conversion of anyone to faith in Christ. But did he receive
preferential treatment? When he did kneel that night in his
rooms at Oxford, he described himself as ‘‘the most dejected
and reluctant convert in all England . . . darting his eyes in
every direction for a chance of escape’’ (SBJ: 228–9). Did
22
From Atheist to Apologist
God bring Lewis to himself against his own will? If so, do we
really have wills of our own; can we make genuine choices?
And why doesn’t God give others the same treatment so that
they also can find salvation?
Perhaps the answer lies in Lewis’s own autobiography. He
searched for years to discover the source of joy he had felt
since childhood, and he really did want to know the truth
about himself and the universe. The search led him through
many philosophies, myths, and religions; who would go to so
much trouble unless he really wanted the truth? ‘‘Seek and
you shall find,’’ Jesus promised. Lewis certainly did that,
rejecting one way after another, until a gracious God finally
responded.
The Christian Lewis
When Lewis became a Christian, the impulse to write
remained, though his ambition to be a famous poet faded
away. Lewis continued to be a scholar of English language
and literature, and wrote several academic works in his chosen
subject area. But he wrote far more in service of his faith. The
more he wrote, the more he needed to write, for readers all
over the English speaking world (and even some who were
not native English speakers) came to regard him as their spiritual mentor who could give them advice. Lewis took this
responsibility seriously, and responded (sometimes with Warren’s help) to everyone who wrote.
As Lewis matured in his faith and as his knowledge of the
Scriptures deepened, a great many things about his world
troubled him as he looked around at it from a Christian perspective. A chief concern was the assumption in England that
Christianity was passé; it had been ‘‘tried’’ and now it was time
to move on to something else. But Christianity hadn’t been
From Atheist to Apologist
23
disproved, Lewis discovered; more than any other way it made
sense of the world. It certainly had done that for Lewis and he
set about explaining and defending the faith in what he surely
knew was a losing effort.
Taken together, the correspondence, articles, and books
Lewis wrote about Christianity fall (roughly speaking) into
three related categories: speaking prophetically to his world,
reaching out to non-believers (evangelism), and living the
faith while helping others do the same. These categories overlap to some extent, and the contents of any given article or
book may fall into more than one category, but these distinctions will prove useful for the discussion of Lewis’s theology in
the chapters that follow.
Lewis as Prophet
Christianity made sense to Lewis because it explained so much
about himself and his world. Lewis studied a wide range of
subjects through the lens of his faith: education, space travel,
pain, literature, evolution, the priesthood, love, joy, Christmas, family life, courtesy, history, war, sex, animals, music,
culture, marriage, and many others. These themes and many
more are scattered throughout his books, articles, and letters,
especially The Abolition of Man, The Problem of Pain, the articles
collected in God in the Dock and The World’s Last Night and Other
Essays, and ‘‘De Descriptione Temporum,’’ his inaugural address at Cambridge University.
In these books and essays the prophetic Lewis speaks to his
times. Just as the Old Testament prophets were raised up by
God to call their people back to God, so Lewis points out
the many idolatries and falsehoods that are infecting the
institutions and values of western cultures because the truths
of Scripture have been forgotten and replaced by more
24
From Atheist to Apologist
‘‘modern’’ ways of thinking. In this role Lewis was doing what
believers are called to do: be salt and light to the world.
Lewis as Evangelist
Lewis believed that Christ was the only way to salvation
and he used a variety of approaches to convey the message
of redemption that have proven effective. In particular he
described the power of myth in his own life and explained
how he came to regard Christianity as myth that entered
into history. It was only natural for him to identify the most
important events in the redemption story and use them
to construct similar stories. The effectiveness of this subtle
approach lies in its appeal to the heart and the imagination,
as stories about dying and resurrecting gods in cultures in
many times and places have shown. They simply have universal appeal, and in this way Lewis could reach people (as he
himself had been prepared) who would draw back from a
more direct call to ‘‘come forward and be saved.’’
Till We Have Faces is one example of the story approach,
written late in Lewis’s life and benefiting from his wife’s contributions. Many readers have told me that there were parts
they didn’t understand when they closed the book. But everyone can feel the pain of the woman telling the story (her name
was Orual). The gods gave her a sister (Psyche) she deeply
loved, and then cruelly took her away, leaving her with a
brutal and coarse father and her own physical ugliness.
Lewis knew that people tend to blame God for bringing evil
into their lives, or at least allowing it and then not doing
anything about it when he could. After all, he is omnipotent
or all-powerful – so the theologians tell us – and can do
whatever he wishes. But when the readers identify with
Orual’s plight, Lewis draws them into his net more effectively
From Atheist to Apologist
25
than by using theological arguments. Orual finally gets her
opportunity to present her case to the divine court, and discovers that they have been kind and merciful all along, and
that her sister has found complete joy in her new life with
them. Lewis both defends God and challenges the readers to
examine their own lives. Hence the title; only when a person is
willing to show God his true face (self) will God reveal himself
in turn. Now that the way is open for honest communication
with God, the readers are ready for the salvation message.
Lewis chose more modern types of fiction to prepare others
for the gospel message because he knew from his enjoyment of
myths just how powerful stories could be. Science fiction was a
genre he enjoyed, and since people weren’t writing the kind of
stories he liked, he and J. R. R. Tolkien, his colleague at
Oxford, decided to write some of their own. The plot of Perelandra, the second book of the space trilogy (Out of the Silent
Planet is the first volume; That Hideous Strength the third),
unfolds on another planet (Venus) and the essential message
of the gospel story is imprinted on the imagination of every
reader: a sacrifice is made (the hero’s name is Ransom) to save
a world.
The same can be said of the atoning death of Aslan in The
Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first of seven volumes
known as The Chronicles of Narnia. The Chronicles first appeared
in 1950, but their real beginning was much earlier, when
Lewis was about sixteen. A picture of a faun (a mythological
creature with the body of a goat and head of a man) carrying
an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood ‘‘came’’ to Lewis,
and some twenty-four years later, he decided to base a story
on that image. Soon, Aslan the lion ‘‘came bounding’’ into the
story (Lewis had been dreaming about lions around that time)
and he ‘‘pulled the whole story together, and soon He pulled
the six other Narnian stories in after Him’’ (‘‘It All Began With
A Picture’’ in OOW: 42). Not only did Lewis use small details
26
From Atheist to Apologist
from the gospels in Perelandra and The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe, such as the Aramaic words Jesus uttered while on
the cross, he even alluded to Old Testament passages that
foretell events in the suffering and death of Jesus.
In Mere Christianity and in the essays, dialogues, and letters
collected by Walter Hooper and published as God in the Dock,
Lewis replaced the ‘‘story’’ approach with a more direct
approach to evangelism based on logic. Lewis got off on the
right foot when he decided to ‘‘recommend’’ Christianity to his
countrymen. His goal was to bring people to faith in Christ, not
get them to join a certain denomination. That approach would
have set members of different denominations against each
other, while Lewis correctly perceived that the real issue was
to persuade people that they needed Christ. After entering the
main ‘‘hall’’ of ‘‘mere’’ Christianity, they could enter from
there into one of the many Christian ‘‘rooms’’ (churches) that
seemed in their opinion to uphold most faithfully what a Christian should believe and how a Christian should live (MC: xi).
Now comes the hard part: what one approach will apply to
people of different cultures around the world? Lewis believed
there was something humans have in common: a sense of fair
play or decent behavior – morality, if you will. And so he
began with quarrels; the sort of disputes that result when
someone feels wronged and tries to convince the other person
of that fact. But the conviction of being wronged, Lewis
argues, is possible only if humans have a standard of right
and wrong that tells them when they have been treated
unjustly. So, Lewis concludes, there must be an external
standard of appropriate behavior toward others that everyone
accepts. If not, quarrels would not even be possible.
But do people and cultures everywhere agree upon this
moral ‘‘law?’’ Certainly, there are individuals who seem to
lack a conscience, just as there are people who are color
blind. But will we find an entire culture that prizes cowardice
From Atheist to Apologist
27
over bravery, dishonesty over truthfulness, and selfishness
over generosity? Of course not, Lewis argues. Moreover,
Lewis adds, even though cultures everywhere agree on the
moral law, they often fail to obey that law. Other laws, such as
the law of gravity, must be obeyed. But not the law of morality, and that sets it apart.
What significance did Lewis see in this unique law? He
believed that it could help decide a question that thinkers
have asked since history began. Is the universe simply an
accident or the expression of a powerful intelligence? If the
latter, then the natural sciences will not discover that power as
a fact in the universe any more than the architect of a house
could be a wall or floor in that house (MC: 19). But that power
could show itself by putting within us an influence that tells us
how we ought to behave, and that is exactly what the moral
law does.
This law also tells us about its author, and the news may not
be to our liking! The law is hard and unyielding, telling us to
do the right thing even when acting morally may be painful or
dangerous. Moreover, ‘‘If God is like the Moral Law, then He is
not soft’’ (MC: 25). If an impersonal mind is behind the law,
then we can’t expect it to give us any slack. But if God is a
personal and a good God, as the law suggests, then he must
hate much of what we do, or fail to do. Either way, Lewis
concludes, humanity is at odds with the moral law and the
source of that law.
When Lewis began his apology for Christianity with the
subject of quarrels, he found a way to demonstrate the moral
law that everyone could understand. And what sensible person would claim to have always obeyed that law? By inescapable logic, Lewis brought his radio audience to the realization
that everyone needs the help that Christianity offers – forgiveness and grace to live a new and better life for those who are
willing to confess their failures and accept God’s redemption.
28 From Atheist to Apologist
Permit me a brief digression. On the way to this conclusion,
Lewis introduced another theme that will get major billing in
his writings: the awesome holiness of God. I think he did this
for two reasons: the Scriptures teach it and Lewis was concerned that many believers had replaced it with a mushy ‘‘God
is love’’ theology that makes God so agreeable that sin hardly
matters any more. But Lewis isn’t having any of this; he knows
full well that ‘‘our God is a consuming fire’’ (Heb 12:29).
God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing
we most need and the thing we most want to hide from . . . Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness
would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only
playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the
great danger – according to the way you react to it. And we
have reacted the wrong way. (MC: 24)
Lewis believed a sense of conviction was just what the
doctor ordered for modern England. A few years after these
radio addresses he wrote that one of the greatest obstacles to
his attempts to promote Christianity was
the almost total absence from the minds of my audience of any
sense of sin . . . The early Christian preachers could assume in
their hearers, whether Jews . . . or Pagans, a sense of
guilt . . . The ancient man approached God (or even the gods)
as the accused man approaches his judge. For the modern man
the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock . . . I
am very far from believing that I have found the solution of this
problem. (‘‘God in the Dock’’ in GID: 243–4)
There were other obstacles as well. Would logic based upon
quarrels reach the atheist, a conviction Lewis knew about
firsthand? Perhaps it would convince some, but it didn’t convince Lewis. But looking back after his conversion, he came to
From Atheist to Apologist
29
believe that the quarrel approach did have something to say to
the atheist, and might have helped him in his search for God if
someone had explained it to him. In brief, Lewis rejected the
idea of God because there was so much evil and injustice in the
world. It was easier to believe the universe came about by
accident. But quarrels reveal the existence of a moral law,
and the atheist has no explanation for that. ‘‘If the whole
universe has no meaning, we should never have found out
that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the
universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should
never know it was dark’’ (MC: 31).
Supposing Lewis was successful in his apologetics – what
then? He knew that to point people to Christianity also meant
sending them to the Bible for spiritual nourishment, and once
there, the new believer would soon read about miraculous
events. Nor is there any way out of the problem, for the
resurrection of Jesus is at the heart of the Christian faith. The
problem then is to defend miracles to people who live in a very
scientific age and expect to find rational explanations for every
event.
When Lewis wrote about the Moral Law that cultures everywhere recognize, he contrasted the Moral Law which can be
(and often is!) disobeyed with the ‘‘laws of nature,’’ such as
gravity, which we are not free to ignore. Since the natural
world is governed by these laws, and since these laws cannot
be broken, should we reject the Biblical accounts of miracles
that seem to break nature’s laws?
Lewis seems to work against himself by granting the point;
laws are ‘‘necessary truths’’ and no miracle can break them.
But Lewis finds the laws of nature do not cause events to
happen and never have. Rather, ‘‘they state the pattern to
which every event – if only it can be induced to happen –
must conform’’ (M: 60). If someone drops an object, the law of
gravity determines what will happen. But the object must first
30
From Atheist to Apologist
be dropped; only then does the law of gravity operate. In the
same way, Lewis observes, if God decides to create a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, the laws of nature
‘‘at once take it over’’ and nine months later, a child is born
(M: 60–1). By definition, then, a miracle is an event which is
caused by God, and the results follow natural laws.
Lewis as Believer and Mentor
First, Lewis wanted to understand Christianity. His conversion
didn’t answer all his questions, but it opened the door to the
Scriptures and two thousand years of church history, and
Lewis spent the rest of his life reflecting upon what the Scriptures revealed and how the great Christian minds before him
had understood them. In my professional opinion, his personal
studies, judging by what he wrote, reveal him to be a very
accomplished amateur theologian. And his theology led to
practics. Once, when Lewis was having lunch with Owen
Barfield and a pupil, he referred to philosophy as a ‘‘subject.’’
‘‘It wasn’t a subject to Plato,’’ responded Barfield, ‘‘it was a
way’’ (SBJ: 225). Lewis took that remark to heart, and a good
deal of his writing is concerned with how he tried to live what
he believed and how he encouraged and guided others to do
the same.
The Four Loves is a good example of Christian instruction. Here
Lewis shows how affection, friendship, and erotic love each
need God’s agape love (charity in the King James translation)
to support them so they can contribute to our lives as God
intended. In Letters to Malcomb: Chiefly on Prayer Lewis offers
advice to new believers, including examples from his own
prayer life. Even more advice (and warnings) comes through
the imaginary correspondence of The Screwtape Letters. Reflections
on the Psalms offers both practical advice on Christianity as a way
From Atheist to Apologist
31
and thoughtful analysis of the meaning of selected psalms.
Finally, Lewis reflected on the Biblical implications of Christ
descending into Hades in The Great Divorce. The implications of
his views of Purgatory will be explored in chapter six.
Lewis the prophet, Lewis the evangelist, Lewis the spiritual
mentor to others . . . join me now for a closer look into these
three perspectives of the theology of this amazing person.
First, we’ll survey the history of the West to discover how
our own times compare with the ages that are past. Next,
we’ll learn why the redemptive work of Christ is the key to
understanding Lewis’s imaginative works. And finally, join me
for a journey on a bus ride to the spirit world with our mentor,
and his mentor and tour guide, that will give us a glimpse of
spiritual perfection as Lewis portrayed it.
Chapter 2
Lewis Looks at His World
‘‘Eustace had turned into a dragon while he slept.’’
Illustration ß 2007 by Deborah Wilson Camp
Lewis Looks at His World 33
Poor Eustace! ‘‘He thought for a second that yet another dragon
was staring up at him out of the pool. But in an instant he
realized the truth. That dragon face in the pool was his own
reflection. There was no doubt of it. It moved as he moved: it
opened and shut its mouth as he opened and shut his.
He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. Sleeping on
a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart,
he had become a dragon himself.’’
(VDT: 74–5)
How did Eustace come to be in such a state? Lewis thinks it
was the way he was raised; by very modern parents whom
Eustace called by their first names. He liked animals, especially
beetles that were dead and pinned on cards, and he liked
books of information with pictures of grain elevators. And
the one lovely picture in the whole house was kept out of
sight a in back room! In brief, there was very little fun, or
pleasure, or beauty in that house. So it’s not surprising that
Lucy and Edmund were not looking forward to staying with
Eustace, whose parents were their uncle and aunt; nor is it
surprising at all that when Eustace found himself in Narnia
with Lucy and Edmund that he proved to be very poor company indeed.
Now the reason Lewis described the upbringing of poor
Eustace as he did was because he felt a person’s education
was very important. Modern schools and modern parents and
modern textbooks were a concern to Lewis because all too
often, the children who were exposed to them resembled
Eustace in many ways. When Lewis came across a high school
textbook of English literature, the philosophy of the use of
language he found therein confirmed his misgivings and
concerned him so much he responded with The Abolition of
Man.
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Lewis Looks at His World
Aesthetics and Morality in the ‘‘Green Book’’
Lewis never gave the names of the authors or the title of the
high school textbook that concerned him; he simply referred to
it as the ‘‘Green Book.’’ It was The Control of Language: A Critical
Approach to Reading and Writing, by Alex King and Martin Ketley, published in 1939. Lewis takes up where the authors of the
‘‘Green Book’’ are discussing the famous English poet Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), who overheard two tourists
looking at a waterfall. One tourist said it was pretty, and the
other sublime. Coleridge silently rejected the first opinion and
agreed with the second. But the authors of the textbook wrote
that when the person said the waterfall was sublime, he was not
really making a remark about the waterfall but about his own
feelings. And the authors added: ‘‘This confusion is continually
present in language as we use it. We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are
only saying something about our own feelings’’ (AOM: 14).
At first glance, this all seems innocent enough and many
readers would pass on without really noticing. In fact, that is a
big part of the problem; few students in their teens would even
realize that objective values were being reclassified as subjective feelings. But Lewis grasped what the authors were really
saying and he realized how serious the implications were.
Values, the authors claimed, are nothing more than subjective
expressions of personal feelings. This can lead to deconstructionism – what the original author intended to say is lost, since
all language is arbitrary and since the reader will impose his or
her own perspective upon the text. Carried to the extreme, the
meaning of the reader is more important than the meaning of
the author.
Lewis emphatically rejected this line of thinking. Beyond
what an author intended to say, there are objective values,
Lewis Looks at His World
35
language can be used to express them, and people need to be
trained to recognize those values. ‘‘Until quite modern times
all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such
that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either
congruous or incongruous to it – believed, in fact, that objects
did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence, or our contempt’’ (AOM: 25).
In other words, Lewis is saying, the man who called the
waterfall sublime was not trying to describe his emotions and
nothing more; he was claiming that what he was admiring
merited those emotions. But such feelings are not merely
instinctive. It is dangerous to assume that people will on
their own recognize beautiful art or good literature. The
explorers who first came upon the Grand Canyon viewed
it not as a spectacle of beauty and grandeur, but as nothing
more than an obstacle to their progress. If schools do not
include aesthetics in their curriculum, the arts will suffer and
students will be impoverished. If pupils are taught that their
feelings and viewpoints are what matter, they will be cut off
from the great minds of the past.
But there is much more at stake here than the capacity to
recognize good literature, music, or art. Lewis maintains that
training in aesthetics lays the groundwork for moral formation. He quotes Traherne: ‘‘Can you be righteous unless you
be just in rendering to things their due esteem?’’ (Thomas
Traherne, English mystical prose writer, poet, and divine
[1637–74], from Centuries of Meditations, 1. 12: 26). Lewis also
agrees with Aristotle, who held that the aim of education is to
make the pupil like and dislike what he ought (Nicomachean
Ethics 1104 B; AOM: 26).
Lewis explains that in all ancient civilizations and up to the
present (in most countries) there has always been agreement
on the doctrine of objective value: the belief that in response to
what the universe is, and what humans are, there are attitudes
36
Lewis Looks at His World
that are really true, and attitudes that are wrong or false. This
means that reactions to beauty (or its lack), that is, emotions or
sentiments about what we see or hear, can be reasonable. They
correspond to an external reality, and so an appropriate emotion
reveals something about that external object. But the textbook
that Lewis objected to so strenuously taught that an emotion
was only an emotional expression, not in agreement or disagreement with Reason. In the system of objective value, a
person may err in not giving something its due esteem, or in
giving esteem to something or someone who does not deserve
it. But if emotions do not reflect external reality, they can’t
even rise ‘‘to the dignity of error!’’ (AOM: 30).
Lewis explains this modern view of feelings, known as
subjectivism, in more detail in his essay ‘‘The Poison of Subjectivism.’’ Value judgments, it turns out, are not judgments
at all, according to subjectivism. ‘‘They are sentiments, or
complexes, or attitudes, produced in a community by the
pressure of its environment and its traditions, and differing
from one community to another. To say that a thing is good
is merely to express our feeling about it; and our feeling about
it is the feeling we have been socially conditioned to have’’
(in CR: 73).
This view of reality strikes at the core of a person. The
intellect or spirit of a man must be joined to the animal body
by the ‘‘chest’’ – his heart or emotions. Only then is he fully
human. But when the heart is unable to connect to the
objective truth outside of him, which is the source of all
value judgments (Lewis refers to it as the Tao), the result is
‘‘men without chests;’’ people who lack the capacity for moral
development. Eustace is a perfect example; he is a ‘‘boy without a chest’’ and must ‘‘undergo a kind of death’’ to be reborn
into humanity (Jacobs, The Narnian: 209).
Lewis published The Abolition of Man in 1947, and gave his
inaugural Cambridge address in 1954. A few years later,
Lewis Looks at His World
37
confirmation for his views came from across the English
Channel in 1968. Francis Schaeffer, founder of the L’Abri
Fellowship in Switzerland, was also concerned about the direction of change in western culture. For him, the divide began
in Germany, around 1890, and spread from there through
Europe, then England, and finally the United States (The God
Who is There: 14–16).
Until that time, as Lewis also recognized, people always
believed there were absolutes in knowledge and morality.
Philosophers reasoned by cause and effect until Hegel, who
proposed a different path: thesis, antithesis, and finally synthesis. Then came Kierkegaard, who believed human reason
could not reach a synthesis; a leap of faith was required. Before
long, art became random, as Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cezanne
expressed the outlook of philosophy that all is chance; there is
no ultimate meaning in life. Music followed next, beginning
with Debussy and ultimately descending to musique concrete,
notes distorted by a machine; and the random sounds of John
Cage. And so on through drama, literature, and finally into
theology.
Two different approaches from two different thinkers, but
they lead to the same conclusion: there has been a change in the
way we come to truth, think about truth, and attain truth, or
fail to do so. And that change has now permeated all of western
thought and life, and left a legacy of despair. The universe is
silent, God is dead, or at least silent, and the only ‘‘authentic’’
life for a person is to act in whatever way seems right.
Aesthetics and Morality in That Hideous Strength
Here is a brief summary of That Hideous Strength. In the third
volume of the science fiction trilogy, Mark and Jane Studdock,
a young, modern couple, find themselves caught up in a sinister
38
Lewis Looks at His World
plot to overthrow England. The National Institute for Coordinated Experiments (NICE), under the leadership of Frost and
Wither, and guided by fallen angels, is manipulating public
opinion by the press, seizing control of local governments,
and planning to dominate the entire world. NICE is even
attempting to conquer death itself by scientific means. So far,
their research appears to be successful in keeping alive a head
detached from its body; the first step in becoming free from the
body and eventually removing all organic life from the earth.
Eventually, Mark is chosen to be the next head, but first he
must be conditioned to follow orders without thinking . . .
To achieve this conditioning, the leaders of NICE bring Mark
to the Objective Room. In this context Lewis again stresses the
connection between aesthetics and morality. The proportions
of the room were all wrong. The arched door was off center.
There are many paintings in the room, including several with
scriptural subjects. But all of them seem warped in one way or
another. Here is a woman with hair inside her mouth, there a
depiction of the Last Supper with bugs crawling around. A
stranger is standing between a painting of Christ and Lazarus.
A giant mantis is playing a fiddle while being eaten by another
mantis. There are the spots on the ceiling and the table that
don’t seem to form a pattern – or do they? Mark feels most
uncomfortable when asked to climb up a ladder, touch one of
the spots on the ceiling, climb back down, and then repeat the
process again and again.
Day after day Mark is brought to this room until he begins to
understand the point of it all. By ‘‘objectivity’’ NICE meant the
state where ‘‘all specifically human reactions were killed in a
man’’ (THS: 299). But Mark began to react to the room in a
way NICE didn’t anticipate.
As the desert first teaches men to love water, or as absence first
reveals affection, there rose up against this background of the
Lewis Looks at His World
39
sour and the crooked some kind of vision of the sweet and the
straight. Something else – something he vaguely called the
‘‘Normal’’ – apparently existed. . . . He was not thinking in
moral terms at all; or else (what is much the same thing) he
was having his first deeply moral experience. (THS: 299)
A few days later, things come to a climax. When Mark
enters the Objective Room he sees that the table has been
moved back to the wall and in its place is a wooden cross on
the floor, almost life size. Frost commands him to insult the
cross and to step on (Lewis uses the word ‘‘trample’’) the face
of the figure on the cross. But Mark began to shrink back . . .
even though he had never believed in Christianity, if it was
mere superstition, why did they want him to step on the cross?
He thought about Jesus, who died complaining that he had
been forsaken. But was that a reason to reject him? ‘‘Supposing the Straight was utterly powerless, always and everywhere
certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally killed by the
Crooked, what then? Why not go down with the ship?’’
(THS: 337).
Mark had long ago realized that he was not going to leave
NICE alive; no one ever did. He was trapped. But with the
introduction of the cross, the situation became more complicated than just the normal and the crooked, and the stakes
were higher than his own life. ‘‘If I take a step in any direction,’’ he thought, ‘‘I may step over a precipice’’ (THS: 335).
Frost continues to urge him to obey, but Mark refuses. In two
wonderful double entendres, he replies: ‘‘It’s all bloody nonsense, and I’m damned if I do any such thing’’ (THS: 337).
Yes, he certainly would be . . . Mark was to trample upon the
figure on the cross; Lewis’s way of recalling Heb 10:29, which
warns against ‘‘trampling underfoot the Son of God, and
regarding as unclean the blood of the covenant.’’ If someone
can be conditioned to accept perversion in the arts, what is
40
Lewis Looks at His World
warped, base, and twisted at last ceases to provoke any reaction at all. Soon, moral perversion will also be acceptable, and
ultimately the destiny of the soul is at stake.
Aesthetics and God in Reflections on the Psalms
As a new believer, Lewis regularly turned to the Scriptures
after his return to Christianity and soon got the impression
from the Psalms that God was an insecure egotist, constantly
telling us to praise him. What he most wanted was to be told
that he was good and great. Lewis solved this problem when
he realized that many objects in nature, literature, and art
deserve, or merit (demand?), our admiration. Others most
definitely do not. The goodness and quality we admire in art
and literature have their source in God himself. ‘‘He is that
Object to admire which (or, if you like, to appreciate which) is
simply to be awake, to have entered the real world; not to
appreciate which is to have lost the greatest experience, and in
the end to have lost all’’ (ROP: 92).
Lewis is making the point that as fallen creatures, people
need the ‘‘training’’ provided in the Psalms. They reveal the
character of God and the appropriate response to that character, just as a good education trains young people in the proper
response to the arts. Even in mathematics and the empirical
sciences, beauty and truth, beauty and solutions also go hand
in hand, reflecting the beauty and wisdom of the Designer
expressed in the design of the universe.
To go in the other direction, to buy into the perspective of
the Green Book, is to remove objective value from the universe, and substitute our own emotional impulses. Nature
herself will become ‘‘mere Nature’’; no longer a portrayer of
objective truth or ‘‘facthood,’’ but simply an instrument for
some people to use to control others. Finally, even human
Lewis Looks at His World 41
nature itself will fall victim to ‘‘mere nature,’’ for the more
nature is defeated, the more strength it gains (Foster, ‘‘An
Estimation of an Admonition:’’ 420–1).
Should Lewis have been so concerned about a textbook?
One high school textbook by itself is not that far-reaching in its
influence, but on the other hand, its significance lies in the fact
that the authors were reflecting a very popular viewpoint of
their times. Lewis himself was surrounded by subjectivists
when he began teaching at Cambridge University in 1954.
Professors such as F. R. Leavis rejected the objective standards
that Lewis believed cultures everywhere recognized, and so
Lewis found himself once again battling for the values that
could prepare a person for Christianity, just as he had fought
so long for Christianity itself (Hooper, C. S. Lewis: 73–4).
Lewis at Cambridge
When Lewis did come to Cambridge to occupy the chair of
English that had been established for him, his inaugural
address revealed the scope of his concern about the recent
changes in the way we perceive or fail to perceive the truth.
To highlight the significance of these changes, Lewis hit upon
a brilliant approach; one that few others would be qualified to
manage. He looked at the entire sweep of western civilization
and then identified several periods of changes so major that
historians use them today to distinguish between ages. In this
way he could compare the most recent period of major
changes, the changes that concerned him, and show how
they were different, and potentially more far-reaching in
their influence, than any previous time of change.
The first significant historical division he described marked
the transition from Antiquity to the Dark Ages: the fall of the
Roman Empire, the barbarian invasions, and the christening
42
Lewis Looks at His World
of Europe (SLE: 4). These were huge changes indeed, and
mostly in terms of losses. Yet the survival of Latin enabled
the disciplines of law and rhetoric to survive and even prosper
during the Dark Ages. The codex replaced the scroll (volumen),
making possible more precise scholarship, and the invention of
the stirrup contributed much to the ‘‘art of war’’ (SLE: 6).
The next major shift saw the Dark Ages giving way to the
Middle Ages around the twelfth century. Things begin to
improve: there were new architectural solutions such as the
flying buttress, the recovery of the text of Aristotle from the
Arabs, which greatly influenced the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, and new forms of poetry (rhymed and syllabic
verse). And yet Lewis finds greater change elsewhere.
Next, Lewis considered the dawning of the sciences in the
seventeenth century. Copernicus finally convinced most people
that the earth was not at the center of the solar system, a giant
step forward in astronomy. Larger and better lenses also benefited astronomy, and the Royal Society was founded in England.
Now science had become a genie that could never be put back
into her bottle (my metaphor, not Lewis’s), but the by-products
that would transform the West were still to come (SLE: 6–7).
But after giving all of these ‘‘divides’’ their due, Lewis concludes that none of them can compare with the radical
changes of the last two centuries, changes that were still continuing in his lifetime and were even accelerating. In politics,
rulers are being replaced by leaders. Where citizens once hoped
for justice and incorruption, now leaders are chosen on the
basis of charisma, excitement, and ‘‘soundbites.’’ In the arts,
modern poetry (sometimes incomprehensible even to other
poets), music, abstract painting, etc. are unlike anything
before. In religion, Christianity is on the way out. Of course,
there are still many Christians around. ‘‘But the presumption
has changed.’’ Religious beliefs and practices are now the
exception rather than the norm (SLE: 9).
Lewis Looks at His World
43
Finally, Lewis plays his ‘‘trump card:’’ machines. So farreaching are the effects of machines that for the first time in
the history of the world our place in nature has been changed.
Passing over the enormous economic and social consequences,
Lewis turns to the way machines (perhaps technology would be
the word we would use today) have influenced the way we
think. We now want and shop for the ‘‘latest,’’ what is ‘‘new
and improved.’’ Machines are continually improved (hence
lending indirect support to the theory of evolution) and so
we have become consumers. Getting new and better appliances
is the idea, not preserving what we have.
The Post-Christian West
Lewis was careful not to offend his scholarly audience at
Cambridge, but as a Christian apologist he didn’t just note
these changes, he was disturbed by them. The faith he felt
called to defend was on its way out. And not just his faith; his
‘‘Old Western’’ culture was on its way out as well. And
because he felt more at home on the far side of the ‘‘Great
Divide,’’ he asked his Cambridge listeners to view him as
a specimen. From his perspective, the modern world was
increasingly a foreign place, cut off from its roots, and so his
convictions had historical value. There is a real poignancy in
the words of a man who knew he was nearly obsolete: ‘‘Use
your specimens while you can. There are not going to be many
more dinosaurs’’ (SLE: 14).
Was the post-Christian West returning to paganism? Not at
all, Lewis stated, correcting those who were describing the
West in those terms. ‘‘A post-Christian man is not a Pagan;
you might as well think that a married woman recovers her
virginity by divorce’’ (SLE: 10). When Christianity is abandoned, paganism is also ruled out.
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Lewis Looks at His World
But roughly speaking we may say that whereas all history was
for our ancestors divided into two periods, the pre-Christian
and the Christian . . . for us it falls into three – the pre-Christian,
the Christian and . . . the post-Christian. This surely must make
a momentous difference . . . Christians and Pagans had much
more in common with each other than either has with a postChristian. The gap between those who worship different gods is
not so wide as that between those who worship and those who
do not. (SLE: 5)
Lewis didn’t want to return to paganism, but at least the
pagans accepted the supernatural and worshipped their gods.
Moreover, the pagan myths that underlie western civilization,
Lewis believed, prepared those cultures for Christianity, when
myth became history. In The Pilgrim’s Regress, Lewis’s first book
as a believer, the allegorical figure History explains to pilgrim
John the value of the mythology of ancient cultures such as
Greece and Rome. ‘‘No one is born able to read: so that the
starting point for all of us must be a picture and not the Rules.
And there are more than you suppose who are illiterate all their
lives, or who, at the best, never learn to read well’’ (PR: 152).
By ‘‘Rules’’ Lewis meant moral codes such as the Torah,
while the pictures were the mythological stories God gave to
the pagans to awaken their desire for him. ‘‘He sent the
human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer
stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a
god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has
somehow given new life to men’’ (MC: 39). When John finally
took the plunge into faith, doubts about the supernatural
assailed him. Then he heard a voice (the voice of God) telling
him:
Child, if you will, it is mythology. It is but truth, not fact: an
image, not the very real. But then it is My mythology. The
words of Wisdom are also myth and metaphor: but since they
Lewis Looks at His World 45
do not know themselves for what they are, in them the hidden
myth is master, where it should be servant: and it is but of
man’s inventing. But this is My inventing, this is the veil under
which I have chosen to appear even from the first until now.
For this end I made your senses and for this end your imagination, that you might see My face and live. (TPR: 171)
Yes, the pagans worshipped many idols and strange gods.
But they worshipped. Yes, the pagans fell into many kinds of
perversions of thought and deed. But they believed in gods,
they thanked them for their crops, and sought their guidance
and protection. And when Christianity came, Lewis reminds
us, the stories they received from God were a good preparation
for another story telling how God became flesh, died for
humanity, and rose again.
When He created the vegetable world He knew already what
dreams the annual death and resurrection of the corn would
cause to stir in pious Pagan minds, He knew already that He
himself must so die and live again and in what sense, including
and far transcending the old religion of the Corn King. (‘‘Miracles’’ in GID: 37)
But today, in this time of unprecedented change, the old
stories have been swept away and replaced by the explanations which science and technology provide. No longer do
modern westerners realize that the miracles Christ performed
show locally what God does universally every year.
God creates the vine and teaches it to draw up water by its
roots, and with the aid of the sun, to turn that water into a juice
which will ferment and take on certain qualities. Thus, every
year, from Noah’s time till ours, God turns water into wine.
That, men fail to see . . . they attribute real and ultimate causality to the chemical and other material phenomena which are all
that our senses can discover in it. But when Christ at Cana
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Lewis Looks at His World
makes water into wine, the mask is off. The miracle has only
half its effect if it only convinces us that Christ is God: it will
have its full effect if whenever we see a vineyard or drink a glass
of wine we remember that here works He who sat at the
wedding party at Cana. (‘‘Miracles’’ in GID: 29)
Yes, ‘‘that, men fail to see.’’ It’s ‘‘Mother Nature’’ now;
things ‘‘just happen that way;’’ the ‘‘laws of nature’’ are working, not divine beings. In tracing these changes in the West,
Lewis arrived at the reasons he lived in a post-Christian England. Of course, he knew full well that there were (and are)
many believers in his own time. But the key for him was that
leaders now increasingly turn to scientists for the answers to
social problems, not to the priests. Any ruler, and those they
ruled, and not just rulers in the West, in the millennia before
the ‘‘Great Divide,’’ and many even today, would wonder at
the sanity of any culture that depended upon human intelligence to ensure its survival. ‘‘Do you not fear the wrath of the
gods?’’ they would ask. ‘‘Do you not desire their protection
and guidance?’’ From ancient Sumer, the beginning of civilization, to the day before yesterday, the separation of church
and state was unthinkable. But now, as Lewis has observed,
‘‘the presumption has changed.’’
The Christian Viewpoint
In his other writings, Lewis was not so reluctant to express his
opinions as he was at Cambridge. As we’ve seen, modern art,
music, and literature are becoming more and more the expression of the artist’s feelings or moods. But when Lewis searches
the Scriptures, he finds that God’s goal for humanity is to help
us become more like Christ. We are to imitate him, reflect him,
until he is formed in us. Even Christ himself claimed that he
Lewis Looks at His World
47
did only what he saw the Father doing (John 5:19). Lewis then
applied this principle of imitation to literature, and I might
add, the same would be true of art and music.
The basis of all critical theory [is] the maxim that an author
should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty
or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as
trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of
eternal Beauty and Wisdom. Our criticism . . . would have affinities with the primitive or Homeric theory in which the poet
is the mere pensioner of the Muse . . . above all it would be
opposed to the idea that literature is self-expression. (‘‘Christianity and Literature’’ in CR: 7)
For the Christian, then, his own temperament and experiences are not important in themselves, while the unbeliever
may focus on them simply because they are his. What matters
to the believer is what comes through him from a higher
source. Not ‘‘is it mine?,’’ but ‘‘is it good?’’ (‘‘Christianity and
Literature’’ in CR: 9)
Collectively, the artistic expressions of any group of people
who share a common language and homeland help form the
culture of those people. On this ‘‘higher’’ level, Lewis remains
consistent to his Christian principles. Culture is not, in itself,
held up as something important in the Scriptures. It must, just
as individual expressions of art and literature, be subordinated
to God, in whom all values reside (‘‘Christianity and Culture’’
in CR: 26).
The implications of Lewis’s review at Cambridge of western
history are twofold: a breakdown in structure in the arts
and literature, resulting in the loss of ancient and medieval
learning, and the systematic exclusion of Christianity from
national life. Leaders now turn to scientists instead of priests
for the solutions to life’s problems. But what is causing these
momentous changes? Lewis believed that God reaches out to
48 Lewis Looks at His World
humanity through myth, but his view of history also reflected
the Biblical perspective that fallen angels have a part to play.
Lewis speaks to the influence of angels upon human history in
That Hideous Strength, where under the guise of fiction he could
safely reveal his inner convictions.
The Hidden Influence
I noted above that NICE was under the guidance of fallen
angels, which Frost and Wither called ‘‘macrobes.’’ The word
‘‘macrobe’’ does double service; Lewis avoids turning off the
reader who doesn’t want Scripture to intrude into science
fiction, and he also gives the impression that NICE views
them simply as larger microbes rather than spirit beings.
Lewis uses MacPhee, one of Ransom’s household in That Hideous Strength (a logical skeptic probably modeled after Lewis’s
admired atheist teacher, Kirkpatrick), to give us a different
perspective. He describes angels to Jane as ‘‘eldils’’ (the ‘‘positive’’ word for angels in the trilogy) which live in space, can
alight on a planet like a bird on a branch, don’t breathe or
reproduce, and some are ‘‘more or less permanently attached
to particular planets’’ (THS: 191). And, of course, some of
them associated with our planet are definitely not friendly.
Lewis is faithfully reflecting his faith; the Bible reveals all
this and much more about angels. Lewis follows Scripture in
depicting Satan as the chief angel over the earth who can offer
Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, and then extends the
same idea to Venus and Mars, the other planets Ransom visits.
These angels, and their planets, are unfallen, and so naturally
the plot revolves around the efforts of earth’s fallen angels to
extend their contagion to the other planets. In Perelandra, the
second volume of the trilogy, Lewis visited the Garden of
Eden, as it were, by depicting the temptation of the Eve of
Lewis Looks at His World
49
Venus. Now, back on earth, Lewis uses That Hideous Strength to
suggest how he imagines the predictions of Scripture might
play out as evil makes its final attempt to rule the earth. First
Genesis, now Revelation.
Mark, Jane’s husband, has been drawn into NICE and the
day comes when the leaders take him (to a point) into their
confidence. At that very time, in the basement of the headquarters, a head which has been removed from its body is
being kept alive (so they believe) through technology. And
through that head’s mouth they receive orders from fallen
angels. Lewis uses this devil-led organization to reveal some
very interesting views which I believe were his own. In
ancient times, the leaders of NICE observe, contact with angels
was only occasional and hindered by superstitions. Nor had
man advanced to the point that angels found us of much
interest.
But though there has been little intercourse, there has been
profound influence. Their effect on human history has been far
greater than that of the microbes, though, of course, equally
unrecognized. In the light of what we now know, all history will
have to be rewritten. The real causes of all the principal events are
quite unknown to historians; that, indeed, is why history has
not yet succeeded in becoming a science. (THS: 257; my emphasis)
Is this remarkable view of history Biblical? Lewis does have a
Scriptural leg to stand on: when Daniel read the book of
Jeremiah and realized that the time of Babylonian exile (70
years) was nearly over, he began praying for God to bring
Jeremiah’s prophecy to pass. Three weeks later, the archangel
Gabriel appeared, and explained the delay by saying he was
opposed by the ‘‘prince of Persia.’’ Finally, the archangel
Michael came to help and Gabriel was able to carry out his
mission. As he left Daniel, Gabriel informed him that he was
50 Lewis Looks at His World
returning to the struggle, and that next the prince of Greece
would come. It’s only a brief glimpse behind the curtain, so to
speak, but the inference is that beneath Satan, the angelic
ruler of this world, there are subordinate angels over nations;
some fallen, and some not, since Michael is identified as the
archangel over Israel (Dan 10:10–21; 12:1).
Since That Hideous Strength is Lewis’s view of how Biblical
prophecy may be realized in the last days, the goals of NICE for
the earth arise from a combination of subjectivism, modern
science, and the influence of devils. In other words, Lewis was
open to the possibility that these factors which he found so
alarming might well usher in the end times. First, NICE
planned to do away with most humans, since they can be
educated only with respect to gaining knowledge. The few
who remain will be useful to the macrobes when they have
been conditioned to believe that emotions are simply chemical
reactions that have no relation to facts (THS: 259). The separation of our emotions from objective reality is precisely what
Lewis objected to in The Abolition of Man; carried to its extreme,
humans will become conditioned to obey the macrobes (fallen
angels) without question. ‘‘We were only following orders’’
was the typical plea at the Nuremburg trials. This conditioning
almost worked on Mark in the Objective Room, but fortunately, he was able to find the courage to take the side of the
good and the straight.
Given his theology-averse readers, Lewis doesn’t use words
like angels; much less does he directly quote Scripture in the
science fiction trilogy. But the attempt of NICE to take over the
world and ‘‘manage’’ humanity could be seen as Lewis’s version of the end times as described in the book of Revelation.
The antichrist and the false prophet of Revelation chapter 13
gain control over humanity for a brief time (and martyr many
believers) and they are able to produce miracles because Satan
has given them his authority. Satan has found someone who
Lewis Looks at His World
51
will accept his offer of all the kingdoms of the world; the very
same enticement which Jesus refused when Satan came to
him in the desert.
One Satanic accomplishment at that time will be, John
predicts in the book of Revelation, a mysterious image of
the beast (antichrist) who had a mortal wound and yet recovered. The false prophet gives orders for its construction and
then somehow gives it breath that enables it to speak (Rev
13:13–15). Lewis expected Satan to deceive humans by using
the technology that they rely on. The head detached from its
body (Revelation’s image of the antichrist) down in the basement of NICE is to all appearances kept alive by technology,
but really is able to speak by the agency of the macrobes.
Filostrato, the technician who believed his scientific expertise
kept the head alive, discovered this when the head spoke even
though his equipment was turned off (THS: 354).
Putting it all together, those at NICE represent the ‘‘materialistic magician’’ Lewis described in The Screwtape Letters;
people who are open to impersonal forces, but reject the idea
of spirit beings. By taking technology to its limits, denying the
existence of the soul, and rejecting any possibility of the emotions or heart of a person responding to objective truth, such
people become the perfect tools of fallen angels who use them
to frustrate the purposes of God on earth.
Lewis and Science
Lewis did not view science and the technology it produces as
demonic. But his Biblical perspective warned him that in its
fallen state, humanity was intelligent enough to know that life
ends in death, but not strong enough to endure that knowledge. Not only that, fallen angels are also at work behind the
scenes. Yes, Lewis really believed that, and to fully appreciate
52 Lewis Looks at His World
his world view, both factors must be taken into account. They
explain man’s inhumanity to man, and our fear of death.
With science as a tool in our hands, Lewis knew it would be
used according to who was guiding those hands. He was fascinated by space and even had a telescope at his home, but he
adamantly opposed the colonization of other planets, even
if the earth does run out of resources. History has already
shown many times how we will treat lesser-developed cultures when we want their land. So when Lewis depicted the
first encounter between humans and beings on another
planet, he made colonization one of the key themes of Out of
the Silent Planet (OSP).
Here is a brief summary of Out of the Silent Planet. The first
volume of the science fiction trilogy begins with Elwin Ransom, an Oxford professor of philology, on a walking tour. He
meets a woman concerned that her retarded son Harry hasn’t
returned home, and promises he’ll look for him. Soon he
comes to a home where he hears a noisy argument, and
pushes his way through the hedge to intervene. There he
meets Weston, a physicist who has invented a propulsion
system for a spacecraft, and Devine, a former classmate. They
are trying to persuade Harry by means of alcohol to enter the
spaceship for a return voyage to Mars. When they find out that
Ransom is unmarried and won’t be missed, they abduct him
instead.
On Mars, Ransom manages to escape and meets three different intelligent species, all friendly. He learns the language of
the planet, and eventually is summoned to meet Oyarsa, the
unfallen angel who oversees the planet, just as Satan has
charge of this planet. Lewis calls the spirit beings of the planet
‘‘eldils;’’ they correspond to ‘‘regular’’ angels, while Oyarsa
would be an angel of higher order. Ransom learns that Mars
was attacked some time ago by Satan, but Oyarsa repelled him
and confined him to earth. But the planet was damaged in the
Lewis Looks at His World
53
attack, and its lifespan is nearing its end. Oyarsa sends the
three back to earth and alters the ship so that it blows up
shortly after landing. Ransom barely escapes in time.
As the plot unfolds, all three earthlings, even Ransom, a
nominal Christian modeled after Lewis himself, display the
fear that characterizes our planet, in Lewis’s view. Devine is
after the gold on Mars, but fears the strange looking inhabitants of Mars, as does Ransom. Weston (his name suggests
‘‘western’’) fears the death of his species. He knows the
resources of earth will someday be exhausted and mankind
will need to reach other planets if the race is to survive.
Everyone also fears Oyarsa; in fact, Devine and Weston come
all the way back to earth after Oyarsa summons them during
their first trip. They intend to get Harry for the sacrifice they
suppose Oyarsa wants, and Ransom’s interference with their
plans cause them to take him instead.
Weston’s fear of death makes him quite willing to liquidate
inferior species, and he defines ‘‘inferior’’ as any culture less
technologically advanced than those of earth. Through
Devine’s quest for gold and Weston’s search for the fountain
of youth, figuratively speaking, Lewis neatly sums up the
motivations behind the colonization on earth of undeveloped
countries by western countries over the past several centuries.
When Ransom learns more about Mars, his fear begins to
subside, and he finds that the natives do indeed have the
capacity for technology. Since the planet is unfallen, they freely
share resources with each other and prefer a simple life in
harmony with nature. Big cities, roads, automobiles, etc. are
simply unnecessary. And since they do not fear death as on
earth, they do not use medical science to prolong life, nor
technology to reach other planets before their own planet dies.
Oyarsa finally has his audience with the space travelers.
Ransom translates for Weston, who informs the angel ‘‘your
tribal life with its stone-age weapons . . . and elementary social
54 Lewis Looks at His World
structure has nothing to compare with our civilization . . . Our
right to supersede you is the right of the higher over the
lower’’ (OSP: 135). Weston believes this ‘‘right’’ is based on
survival of the species; life must continue. ‘‘Life is greater than
any system of morality; her claims are absolute. It is not by
tribal taboos and copy-book maxims that she has pursued her
relentless march from the amoeba to man and from man to
civilization’’ (OSP: 136).
After further questioning of Weston, with Ransom translating and interpreting, Oyarsa is able to grasp Weston’s viewpoints. Through him, Lewis passes judgment on those in our
world who believe humanity must survive at any cost.
I see now how the lord of the silent world (meaning Satan) has
bent you. There are laws that all hnau (Lewis’s word for all
species with souls) know, of pity and straight dealing and
shame and the like, and one of these is the love of kindred.
He has taught you to break all of them except this one, which is
not one of the greatest laws; this one he has bent till it becomes
folly and has set it up, thus bent, to be a little, blind Oyarsa in
your brain. (OSP: 138)
Lewis next exposes the illogic of Weston’s loyalty to humanity. Oyarsa points out that he has come to a planet near the
end of its lifespan. Yes, Weston says, but he reminds Oyarsa
that his efforts are only the first attempt to travel in space. We
will go to other planets, he promises. Those will also die, says
Oyarsa. Eventually all worlds will die, what then? Weston has
no answer. Oyarsa then asks a very interesting question:
haven’t you wondered why we, on a dying planet, haven’t
come to conquer your planet? Weston laughs, and, with typical western mindset, tells Oyarsa the beings on his planet
don’t have the necessary technology to reach other planets.
Yes we do, Oyarsa responds; but we are remaining here
because we are not afraid of death.
Lewis Looks at His World
55
This is too much for Weston. Reaching his breaking point,
he shouts at Oyarsa in his pidgin English: ‘‘Trash! Defeatist
trash! You say your Maledil (God) let all go dead. Other one,
Bent One (Satan), he fight, jump, live – not all talkee-talkee.
Me no care Maledil. Like Bent One better: me on his side’’
(OSP: 140).
Now we can tie it all together. The world Lewis saw through
Biblical lenses was a complex record of human events made
even more complicated by both good and bad influences from
the spirit world. Anyone who embraced Christianity as Lewis
had would soon discover that he had stepped into a battlefield
with human souls at stake, including his own. On the positive
side, Lewis also believed that the Bible told how the struggle
would play out. Satan will make a final attempt at world
domination at the end of the age, but the return of Christ
will spell the end of the antichrist and usher in God’s kingdom.
When that end would come no one knows, but the significance of Lewis’s Cambridge address is that at the peak of his
career, he could look over the sweep of western history, and
when he did so, he found that he was living in a time of
unprecedented change. What perturbed him in the Green
Book was happening on a huge scale. And it was part of a
plan. Fallen spirits led by Satan, the Oyarsa of this planet, have
been and still are working behind the scenes to influence the
course of history. The erosion of standards in the arts and
literature was being followed by the same decline in morality.
Christianity itself was becoming a thing of the past in official
circles. He chronicled the development of this erosion in ‘‘De
Descriptione Temporum,’’ he warned against it in The Abolition
of Man, and traced its origin to fallen humanity under Satanic
influence in the science fiction trilogy and The Screwtape Letters.
Our sentinel is no longer with us, but our turn in the great
conflict has come and we would do well to heed his warnings.
Chapter 3
Lewis Reaches Out
to His World
‘‘Edmund is my lawful prey!’’
Illustration ß 2007 by Deborah Wilson Camp
Lewis Reaches Out to His World
57
‘‘You have a traitor there, Aslan,’’ said the Witch.
‘‘Well,’’ said Aslan. ‘‘His offense was not against you.’’
‘‘Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?’’ asked the Witch.
‘‘Let us say I have forgotten it,’’ answered Aslan gravely. ‘‘Tell
us of this Deep Magic.’’
‘‘Tell you?’’ said the Witch . . . ‘‘You at least know the magic
which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You
know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and
that for every treachery I have a right to a kill.’’
(LWW: 138–9)
The Witch wanted to claim Edmund for a very good reason:
‘‘It’s a saying [said Mr. Beaver] in Narnia time out of mind
that when two Sons of Adam and two Daughters of Eve sit
in those four thrones, then it will be the end not only of
the White Witch’s reign but of her life’’ (LWW: 78). If
only Edmund could be slain, the prophecy could not come
true.
People enjoy The Chronicles of Narnia for many reasons,
and one of them is the mythology that gives such depth to
the story. I have already shown that Lewis’s conversion was
facilitated by the realization (thanks to J. R. R. Tolkien) that
Christianity was the story of a God who actually entered
history. Myth became fact. We should hardly be surprised,
then, if Lewis wanted to move his readers with the power of
myth just as he had been. And the power of myth comes
through stories that convey truth. Myth became fact and
truth became history. And so, the story of Narnia is the
myth, not allegory, telling how Aslan, the creator of Narnia,
entered his own creation as a lion, just as Jesus came into his
creation as a man.
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Lewis Reaches Out to His World
The Redemption Story: Lewis’s Subtle Approach
Telling, or perhaps I should say, retelling the redemption story
in various formats reveals its importance to Lewis; indeed, it is
the story of stories. Lewis doesn’t argue the logic of the gospel
in his imaginative works; he appeals to the heart. This is a very
effective if subtle approach to evangelism. Later, the mind of
the seeker or new believer can benefit from the more logical
approach of such books as Mere Christianity, but first the heart
and the imagination must be captured. The heart of the Christian story is the redemptive work of Christ, and Lewis makes
this his focus in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Perelandra, and The Great Divorce. I begin with a brief summary of the
final days of Christ’s earthly life, death, descent, and resurrection to show how and where Lewis used them in his books.
First, the events leading up to Christ’s death. Scholars generally focus upon his last days in Jerusalem, beginning with his
entry into that city on a donkey, and concluding with his
arrest. The major events in this week would be the last supper
with his disciples, and his agony in the garden as he wrestles
with God’s will. Lewis was deeply moved by God’s refusal
(‘‘Let this cup pass from me:’’ Matt 26:39) and abandonment
(‘‘Why have you forsaken me?’’ Matt 27:46) of the one who
served him perfectly, and often referred to it in his writings. If
the prayer of the sinless Jesus went unanswered, Lewis knew
it could be his own experience as well. He cautioned his
readers more than once to expect fewer answered prayers as
they matured in their faith.
Next, the sufferings and death of Jesus, or his ‘‘passion.’’ Jesus
was arrested, sent to several different people for hearings before
Jewish and Roman officials, and finally condemned on the
testimony of false witnesses. Once sentenced to death, he was
mocked, stripped, beaten, crowned with thorns, and crucified.
Lewis Reaches Out to His World 59
Finally, Lewis is very interested in the events between the
death and the resurrection of Jesus. Biblical passages speak of
the body of Jesus being placed in a borrowed tomb (Matt
27:59–60), his soul descending into Hades (Acts 2:27), where
he took ‘‘captivity captive’’ (Eph 4:7–8), preparing a place for
his disciples (John 14:2), being raised from the dead, and
returning from Hades and the grave in triumph, and proclaiming: ‘‘I have the keys of death and Hades’’ (Rev 1:18).
The redemption story in The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe
Lewis began The Chronicles of Narnia with this volume, which
was an attempt to form a story around the image of a faun
which had been in his mind for many years. But when Aslan
the lion abruptly entered his thoughts (Lewis couldn’t explain
how!), a story did emerge, and the plot soon developed into
the retelling of the redemption story adapted to fit the world of
Narnia.
The gospels describe Jesus choosing to go up to Jerusalem,
knowing the fate that awaited him there. The treachery of
Edmund confronts Aslan with the same decision to give up
his life. Quite a few things happen there in the last week of the
earthly lives of Jesus and Aslan, but both Lewis and the gospels
indicate that the White Witch/Satan is especially busy at this
time. Jesus tells Peter that Satan wants to sift him and the
other disciples ‘‘like wheat.’’ But his prayers for Peter will
steady him, and when Peter has recovered, he should help
the others (Luke 22:31–34). And, of course, Satan has more
success with Judas, who betrays Jesus after Satan has entered
into him (John 13:27).
Lewis doesn’t try to replicate all of these details, but the
Witch does ask for an audience with Aslan. Once granted,
she reveals her purpose in coming: ‘‘You have a traitor there,
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Lewis Reaches Out to His World
Aslan.’’ Aslan responds that Edmund has not wronged her,
but the Witch reminds him (Lewis uses the Witch to inform
his readers) of the Deep Magic instituted by the Emperor at
the very beginning of Narnia. Every traitor becomes the
Witch’s ‘‘lawful prey’’ (LWW: 138–9). As Christ died for sinful
humanity, Aslan will choose to die for Edmund.
In the gospels, Jesus next observes the last supper with his
disciples and then goes to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray.
Lewis also includes a final supper, but it’s not a special meal or a
new covenant, nor does he depict Aslan praying, but he does
emphasize the sense of impending doom. After the meal, Susan
and Lucy are unable to sleep. They decide to get up and check
on Aslan, and in the moonlight they see him leaving the camp
and walking into the wood. His head and tail are drooping, and
he walks as if completely exhausted. When Aslan sees them, he
allows them to accompany him and they stroke his mane to
comfort him when he tells them he is sad and lonely (LWW:
144–8). Leaving them concealed in the woods, Aslan walks
further to the mob awaiting him at the Stone Table. As in
the gospel accounts, the women will become witnesses of the
suffering and death, though in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the girls cover their eyes at the moment of Aslan’s death.
Here are some of the more obvious parallels between the
sufferings of Christ and Aslan (LWW: 149–52):
.
.
A contingent of soldiers comes to the Garden of Gethsemane to arrest Jesus, accompanied by the high priest and
other leaders. Jesus rebukes them, but yields, adding: ‘‘This
is your hour and the power of darkness’’ (Luke 22:53).
Lewis depicts the satanic involvement in Aslan’s demise
by having the lion seized by a horde of ogres, wraiths, and
other monsters.
The chief priests and the elders bind Jesus when they have
decided his guilt and send him to Pilate (Matt 27:2). The
Lewis Reaches Out to His World 61
.
.
.
.
.
.
White Witch orders Aslan bound, and four hags set upon
him, soon aided by evil dwarfs and apes. They roll him over
on his back and tie his paws together. After much abuse, he
is bound again, this time to the stone table.
Next, the Witch decides Aslan should be shaved. The gospels do not mention Jesus being shaved, but Lewis includes
this to reflect Isa 50:6, a prophetic passage foretelling the
treatment of the Messiah: ‘‘I gave my back to those who
struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the
beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.’’
Aslan doesn’t look so fierce after he has been shaved, and
the crowd mocks him, calling him Puss and asking how
many mice he’s caught or if he’d like a saucer of milk. The
greatness of Jesus is also derided. The soldiers put a purple
robe on him, a crown of thorns, place a reed in his hand for
a scepter, and kneel before him in pretend worship (Matt
27:27–30).
Jesus remains silent before Pilate (Matt 27:11–14); Aslan
offers no resistance, neither moving nor roaring, but is
muzzled anyway.
Jesus is struck when the high priest accuses him of blasphemy (Matt 26:64–68), and later by the soldiers, who also
spit upon him (Matt 27:30). Both Jesus and Aslan remain
silent. After Aslan has been muzzled, the crowd attacks,
kicking, hitting, and spitting upon him.
Aslan is tied to the stone table, and Jesus is nailed to the
cross (Matt 27:35).
The Witch dispatches Aslan with a strangely shaped stone
knife; a soldier pierces the side of Jesus with his sword
(John 19:34). Blood and water come from Jesus’s side;
blood and foam from Aslan.
As in the gospels, no human actually witnesses the resurrection, since Jesus is sealed in a tomb with Roman guards
62
Lewis Reaches Out to His World
posted to prevent anyone from entering. In The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe, the event also goes unnoticed, since the girls
are walking around to ward off the cold. (A wise decision on
the part of Lewis; how does one describe a resurrection?) But
in preparation for Aslan’s return to life, mice gnaw through
the ropes that bind him, a fitting touch for an animal world,
and perhaps inspired by a Roman historian. In the essay ‘‘Miracles’’ Lewis observed that angels stopped Sennacherib’s invasion of Israel (2 Chron 32:21), while Herodotus wrote that
many mice came and chewed through his army’s bowstrings
(‘‘God in the Dock’’ in GID: 28).
Just as the sun appears, the girls hear a loud cracking noise,
as if ‘‘a giant had broken a giant’s plate’’ (LWW: 158). Returning to the stone table, they find it broken in half, and empty.
They burst into tears. In the gospels, Luke describes the
women who come at dawn to anoint the body with spices as
perplexed at the empty tomb (Luke 24:1–4), but in John’s
account, Mary weeps because she believes that the body of
Jesus has been removed. Turning around she discovers Jesus
standing there. Likewise, Lucy and Susan hear a voice behind
them and turn to discover Aslan, alive and looking larger than
ever. As did the disciples, they wonder if they are seeing a
ghost (Luke 24:37; LWW: 159), and in both cases, Jesus/Aslan
convinces them that he is real. Jesus invites his disciples to
touch him (Luke 24:39); Aslan licks Susan’s forehead.
The mysterious stone table requires a separate note. Paul
Ford describes it well in his Companion to Narnia: it’s covered
with strange carvings, seems to have been around forever, and
its history is unknown. But what does it represent? Since the
main point of the Deep Magic is that the Witch has a right to
the life of every traitor, and since the stone table is the place
where such are killed, one possible interpretation is that the
place represents the Old Testament Law, which Paul describes
by the words ‘‘the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on
Lewis Reaches Out to His World
63
stone tablets’’ (2 Cor 3:7). That Law was unforgiving; every sin
must be atoned for with blood. But when Christ died in our
place, he paid that penalty with his own blood, ‘‘erasing the
record that stood against us with its legal demands’’ (Col 2:13).
Thus, when Aslan dies, the great stone table is broken in two,
signifying that the power of what is written upon it has been
nullified, since its demands have been met. The Witch understood the Law. But she did not realize, Aslan says, ‘‘that when
a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in
a traitor’s stead, the table would crack and Death itself would
start working backwards’’ (LWW: 160).
Sure enough, when Susan and Lucy hear the stone table
crack, they rush back to it to find a great crack running down
through it. In the gospel account, the veil of the Temple in
Jerusalem where sacrifices for sin were offered according to the
law was also ‘‘cracked;’’ that is, torn in two from top to bottom
(Luke 23:45). But they soon forget the sound because something much worse meets their eyes; Aslan is gone! ‘‘Oh, it’s too
bad,’’ sobbed Lucy; ‘‘they might have left the body alone.’’
Lucy’s tears recall those of Mary Magdalene’s, who tells the
two angels she weeps because ‘‘They have taken away my Lord
and I do not know where they have laid him’’ (John 20:13). In
both accounts, the girls, and Mary, then turn around and find
Jesus standing there. Susan begins to ask if he is a ghost; Aslan
licks her forehead to show he is indeed physically there. The
disciples also become frightened when Jesus appears to them,
supposing he is a ghost, and he reassures them by inviting them
to touch him, and finally, seeing they were still unconvinced,
by eating some fish (Luke 24:37–43).
After Aslan comes back to life, he romps with the girls (a
passage quite unique to Christian literature) and then flies to
the Witch’s castle with them on his back. There in the courtyard they find the many animals the Witch had turned to
stone, but Aslan returns them to life after breathing on them.
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Lewis Reaches Out to His World
For a second after Aslan had breathed upon him the stone lion
looked just the same. Then a tiny streak of gold began to run
along his white marble back – then it spread – then the colour
seemed to lick all over him as the flame licks all over a bit of
paper – then, while his hind-quarters were still obviously stone
the lion shook his mane and all the heavy, stony folds rippled
into living hair . . . everywhere the statues were coming to life.
The courtyard looked no longer like a museum; it looked more
like a zoo. (LWW: 165–6)
After finishing with the courtyard, ‘‘Now for the inside of this
house!’’ said Aslan. ‘‘Look alive, everyone. Up stairs and down
stairs and in my lady’s chamber! Leave no corner unsearched.
You never know where some poor prisoner may be concealed’’
(LWW: 167). And so Narnia’s ‘‘Hades’’ was winnowed.
The ransacking of the Witch’s castle may well be the Narnian version of Christ’s descent into the underworld (perhaps
Lewis also had the resurrection of bodies in mind) where he
‘‘took captivity captive’’ (Eph 4:8). The description of the
Witch’s stronghold as a castle also brings to mind Luke
11:21–22, where Jesus is defending himself against the accusation of the Pharisees that he has been using the power of
Beelzebul (Satan) to cast out demons. The correct understanding of his ministry is that Jesus opposes Satan and has nothing
to do with his power. Jesus depicts his ministry by this metaphor: the castle of a strong man has been invaded by an even
stronger man, who overpowers the owner and then takes
whatever he wishes from the castle. So then, both the earthly
ministry of Jesus and his descent into Hades (the dungeon of
the castle!) represent the plundering of Satan’s possessions.
But since Aslan had flown over the wall, they were all still
trapped in the courtyard, as the gates were still locked. At
the request of Aslan, Giant Rumblebuffin smashes the gates
with his club, and then the towers on each side (LWW: 169).
This again reflects Biblical imagery, such as Isaiah 38:10:
Lewis Reaches Out to His World 65
‘‘I said: In the noontide of my days I must depart; I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years,’’ and
Matthew 16:18: ‘‘And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this
rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not
prevail against it.’’ Christ has changed what the Old Testament
saints knew as a permanent prison into a temporary place for
souls.
Lewis concludes the redemption story in The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe with a post-resurrection appearance of Aslan,
again following the lead of the gospels. In the gospel of John,
Jesus appears to several of his disciples when they are fishing
at the Sea of Tiberias. When they recognize Jesus and have
caught many fish by following his instructions, they come to
shore and find waiting a charcoal fire with fish and bread.
John does not tell us the source of this food. Likewise, at the
last meeting between Aslan and the children, they have a meal
together. ‘‘How Aslan provided food for them all I don’t know;
but somehow or other they found themselves all sitting
down on the grass to a fine high tea at about eight o’clock’’
(LWW: 178).
And after that? ‘‘These two Kings and two Queens governed
Narnia well and long and happy was their reign’’ (LWW: 180).
This too is Biblical, for the ultimate destiny of the redeemed is
to rule with Christ when he returns (Rev 20:4).
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe now can be seen as the
Christian story in an imaginary world. It resembles the ancient
myths because the ancient myths foretold Christianity. The
essential plot is a human fall that destroys an ideal life between
humans and the gods. Then a divine figure appears, dies, and
comes back to life to restore harmony. Only one person ‘‘falls’’
in Narnia, but his betrayal brings him under the control of
the Witch who prepares to prevent the fulfillment of the
prophecy. All of Narnia will be under her control forever if
she succeeds.
66
Lewis Reaches Out to His World
As the above comparison shows, Lewis may have taken his
liberty in adapting the gospel narratives for his own Narnian
purposes, but he still reflects them to a remarkable degree. He
obviously knew the Biblical traditions well, believed them to
constitute the greatest story of all, and was confident the
power of the story would remain effective in a variety of
fictional settings.
Next, the redemptive work of Christ as reflected in Perelandra.
The redemption story in Perelandra
Perelandra is the second volume of the space trilogy; Out of the
Silent Planet is the first and That Hideous Strength is the third. In
volume one, Ransom is kidnapped and taken to Mars, an old
planet. But in Perelandra, a good angel sends him to Venus, a
new planet with only two people on it. ‘‘Suppose . . . in some
other planet there were a first couple undergoing the same that
Adam and Eve underwent here, but successfully’’ (‘‘To Mrs.
Hook’’ in L: 475, December 29, 1958). The conflict begins when
Weston arrives from earth and becomes possessed by Satan.
Through Weston, Satan attempts to persuade Tinidril, the first
woman of her planet, to disobey the single command for her
planet, just as he tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden. Ransom
does his best to help the woman resist the temptations, but
Weston won’t stop. Finally, Ransom realizes the only option
left is to physically attack Weston, and the battle is joined. Once
again, the fate of an entire world hangs in the balance.
Ransom’s destiny
Although Perelandra lacks many of the specific details of
Christ’s suffering that Lewis included in The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe, the contents of the gospels are prominent
once more. Lewis picks up the gospel thread with his version
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67
of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. The gospels describe
Jesus in agonized prayer as he reflects upon what awaits him
in Jerusalem, while his disciples unsuccessfully try to stay
awake (Matt 26:36–46). In Perelandra, Ransom has no one to
pray with him, but at least his opponent, the Unman (Weston
possessed by Satan), has been cast into sleep by Maledil (God).
Indeed, even the Lady and the animals in the vicinity have all
been put asleep so that their innocence will not be marred by
the physical violence that will soon ensue.
And so, all through chapter eleven, Ransom struggles to
grasp his situation and to discover what God wants him to
do. I realized only a few years ago that all of this chapter is set
in the total darkness that characterizes Perelandrian night. In
the fourth gospel, after Satan enters into Judas and he leaves
the last supper to betray Jesus, John adds these ominous
words: ‘‘And it was night’’ (John 13:30).
In Perelandra, the three prayers of Jesus in the garden are
expanded into a conversation with God, though Ransom does
most of the talking. Lewis depicts the intensity of the struggle
by having Ransom groan, writhe, and even grind his teeth.
Three times God says to him ‘‘This can’t go on,’’ meaning the
relentless tempting of the Lady by the Unman; that is, Weston
now possessed by Satan. God’s will for Ransom also proves to
be threefold. Ransom must accept that he is God’s instrument,
that he must act and not just wait in faith for God to do
something, and that he has been brought to Perelandra to
engage the Unman in a physical battle – a daunting prospect
for an out-of-shape professor!
A less obvious parallel between Christ and Ransom revolves
around their persons and not just their actions. Jesus is
‘‘the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world’’ (1 Pet
1:19–20), and Ransom learns during the night that he also has
been predestined for the conflict that will help determine the
fate of Venus.
68 Lewis Reaches Out to His World
He knew now why the old philosophers had said that there is
no such thing as chance or fortune beyond the Moon. Before
his Mother had born him, before his ancestors had been called
Ransoms, before ransom had been the name for a payment that
delivers, before the world was made, all these things had so
stood together in eternity that the very significance of the
pattern at this point lay in their coming together in just this
fashion. (PER: 125)
Ransom’s only comfort comes in the fact that God identified
with him, saying: ‘‘My name is also Ransom’’ (PER: 126). If
he should fail, God would still, somehow, provide another
solution, another ransom. But it will cost him even more
than on earth, and Ransom finally realizes that he is the
chosen one, and yet has freedom to choose to fight the
Unman. Predestination and free will no longer seem different,
and he chooses to obey.
The battle
Once the Unman realizes that Ransom intends to fight him, he
does the unexpected. With a loud voice he cries out: ‘‘Eloi,
Eloi, lama sabachthani’’ (PER: 130). Satan has remembered
these Aramaic words of Jesus (Mark 15:34) and now he uses
them to torment Ransom. Jesus died alone and forsaken, and
Ransom can expect the same fate.
The battle itself is ferocious, with neither yielding an inch.
The Unman leaps upon Ransom and those same, long, sharp
fingernails that tortured the frog-like creatures not long before
now tear strips of skin and flesh from Ransom’s back. This
recalls the multi-thong flagellum which the Romans generally
used to whip criminals before crucifixion. Jesus suffered in this
manner at the command of Pilate (Mark 15:15).
Eventually, the ferocity of Ransom’s attack forces the
Unman to flee. Ransom pursues but is unable to overtake
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69
him. After a long chase, Weston takes to the ocean riding on
the back of a porpoise-like fish, with Ransom still following on
another fish. During the hours’ long chase, he realizes that he
is very thirsty. But after trying for half an hour to bend over
and get a drink, the stiffness of his battered body prevents him
from managing more than a tiny sip ‘‘which merely mocked
his thirst.’’ Jesus likewise became thirsty, but was mocked by
being offered only some vinegar on a sponge (John 19:28).
Finally, when both fish become weary, Ransom does catch
up to Weston, who seems to have come back to himself. But
after a discussion of life and death, Weston suddenly grabs him
and pulls him down into the water. Just when Ransom thinks
he must surely die, they emerge into an underground cavern
and the battle continues. In the gospels, Jesus dies on the
cross, but in Perelandra the struggle does not lead to Ransom’s
death, for he is only a mortal and resurrection is not an option.
But Ransom does experience a symbolic death. His descent in
the clutches of the Unman to the underground cavern is
Lewis’s version of Christ being ‘‘in the heart of the earth’’
(Matt 12:39); that is, Hades, after his death. Thanks to Lewis,
we can imagine Satan waiting for Jesus to breathe his last on
the cross and then pulling his soul down to the underworld,
hoping for a victorious conclusion to the struggle there.
As the struggle continues underground, Ransom chokes the
Unman until he seems lifeless. Yet even then Satan once again
uses Weston’s body to continue the pursuit. Finally, after a
brief, Trinitarian prayer (‘‘In the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Ghost, here goes – I mean Amen,’’ PER:
155), Ransom smashes the Unman’s head with a stone and
pushes the body over a cliff. It falls into a sea of fire far below,
and the battle is finally over. The way the struggle ends clearly
recalls Genesis 3:15, where God tells the serpent that someday
one of Eve’s descendants will crush his head. (The church
fathers referred to this passage as the protoeuangelion, the
70 Lewis Reaches Out to His World
Greek word for ‘‘first gospel,’’ because it is the earliest promise
of Christ’s redemption in the Bible.) And the fiery pit recalls
the lake of fire reserved for Satan and his angels (Matt 25:41).
Finally, Lewis based his description of this pit as ‘‘a terrible
place where clouds of steam went up for ever and ever’’ (PER:
183) on Revelation 19:20 and 20:10, where the smoke ascends
forever from the lake of fire.
After Christ’s descent into Hades, he ascended; first to the
earth where he appeared to many and gave further instructions
to his disciples, and then to Heaven where he took his place at
the right side of his Father. Ransom’s ascent also has two parts.
After a long, painful climb he finally falls into an underground
river which brings him back to the surface and deposits him into
a shallow pool. Crawling out of the warm water he rests on the
soft turf, eating nearby fruit until his battered body is healed
many days later. When he is nearly well, he notices for the first
time that his heel has a wound (from a bite – the Unman was a
dirty fighter!) that refuses to heal. This is Lewis’s version of
Christ who retained the scars of his death by crucifixion even
in his resurrection body. Like Jesus, Ransom bears in his ‘‘resurrection’’ body the evidence of his suffering. The injured heel
also represents the other half of the prediction of Genesis 3:15:
‘‘you [the serpent] will strike his heel.’’
The second part of Ransom’s ‘‘post-resurrection’’ experiences brings him not into Heaven but climbing to the highest
point on the planet, where he walks on rose-colored (Easter?)
lilies. There, for the first time, his bleeding heel leaves no trace.
Then, at a sacred place in a valley, Ransom speaks with the
Adam and Eve of Perelandra, next with the angelic rulers of
Mars and Venus, and finally he experiences a beatific vision.
Then he does indeed ascend into the Heavens, but this journey
returns him to his own planet.
Looking back, we can see that Lewis wanted to tell the
redemption story in novel form, knowing the power of this
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71
greatest of all stories. And the essential parts are all present,
from the agony in the garden to the suffering, the descent into
the ‘‘lower parts of the earth,’’ and finally the resurrection and
ascent into Heavenly places.
The fondness of Lewis for the redemption story of the gospels and his willingness to modify it within the new context of
Narnia, also holds true in the Ransom trilogy. For example, the
Aramaic cry of despair now comes from Satan, not the one
who is about to die. Also, Ransom doesn’t literally die, as did
Jesus, nor does he descend to Hades, or ascend into Heaven.
And yet the basic pattern remains. Ransom struggles with the
will of God; next he suffers a symbolic death, triumphs over
his enemy in the underworld, and ascends from the heart of
the planet to its highest point, where he experiences a beatific
vision.
Note the reluctance of Lewis to repeat himself when describing the smaller details. Virtually none of the ways in which
Aslan suffered are repeated here. Nor does Aslan experience
the specific details of Ransom’s conflict. For example, the cry
of Aramaic is missing in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
nor is Aslan whipped, though this is a prominent feature of
Christ’s abuse in the gospels. But Ransom has his back torn by
the Unman’s fingernails. If we combine the two accounts,
nearly everything in the gospels is accounted for, excluding
the various trials that Jesus went through before Jewish and
Roman authorities – events that specifically apply only to firstcentury Palestine.
The myth that entered history
What effect would these stories of Aslan’s death and Ransom’s
struggle have on readers who were not familiar with the Bible
and perhaps even hostile to organized religion? The power of
this approach is that it is, one might say, pre-religious. The
72 Lewis Reaches Out to His World
pattern of a stronger person, perhaps even a divine person,
sacrificing himself for a weaker person appeals to the human
heart, since we are touched by examples of fortitude motivated by love. Now, should the reader of Lewis encounter the
gospel story, the redemptive work of Christ will have a familiar
ring to it and will resonate with the same deep appeal that
Narnia brings.
Such is the strategy of the ‘‘dinosaur’’ who knew that his
kind was nearly extinct. The study of the classics (the writings
of ‘‘dead white men’’) he enjoyed was disappearing; few modern readers know the old myths. So in The Lion, the Witch and
the Wardrobe and in Perelandra, Lewis wrote his own versions
of them, based on the gospel accounts as we have seen. They
are not allegories but myths. They convey the pattern of truth
as they describe the God acting on behalf of his creation.
The significance of this can hardly be overstated. When
Lewis perceived that the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus were myth become history, he realized that the
older myths told much the same story, though often distorted.
‘‘The truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long
process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as
History’’ (M: 139, footnote 1). That they shared the same
themes was no accident; for Lewis, they were ‘‘good
dreams . . . scattered all through the heathen religions about a
god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has
somehow given new life to men’’ (MC: 39). One might say
Christianity has ‘‘redeemed’’ the old myths that Lewis once
described as ‘‘breathing a lie through silver’’ (‘‘On Fairy Stories’’ in Essays Presented to Charles Williams: 71). Now we see
them for what they actually were: God-given stories about
God that were given to prepare pre-Christian cultures for the
truest story of all.
In effect, Lewis is also saying this is the story of stories. There
are many religions and beliefs in the world, and most of them
Lewis Reaches Out to His World
73
share elements of the Christian story. Lewis did not find this
surprising, nor a threat to Christianity, since humans everywhere share the values of the Tao. But only in Israel, only
once in our history, and only in Jesus did God enter time and
space in human flesh. ‘‘The Hebrews, like other peoples, had
mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology – the mythology chosen by
God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truths, the first step
in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth
has become completely historical’’ (M: 139, footnote 1). As
Jesus told the woman of Samaria he witnessed to at the well,
‘‘salvation is of the Jews’’ (John 4:22).
In the story of stories, Lewis believed, God has revealed the
only way for sinful humanity to find redemption. As God’s
storyteller, Lewis reached out to the imagination of his
readers. But as a theologian, if only an amateur, he knew
quite well the implications of the faith. If Jesus is indeed
‘‘the way, the truth, and the life’’ as he claimed (John 14:6),
what of the untold billions who have lived and died without
hearing the story? Must they all be lost? Lewis found the
answer, in the Scriptures as we might expect, and the solution
is nearly as incredible as the story itself. In fact, it is part of the
story and we shall return to this problem and its solution in
chapter six.
The Redemption Story: Lewis’s Direct Approach
In chapter two, I introduced the ‘‘quarrel approach’’ Lewis
used to convince his wartime listeners that there was a moral
law that people of all times and cultures could largely agree on.
Returning to those radio talks as they now stand in Mere
Christianity, we discover there is a logical progression from
that starting point to a relationship with God. But the path
74 Lewis Reaches Out to His World
was not easy for Lewis, since his countrymen had little or no
sense of conviction in their lives. How then could he convince
them of their need for salvation?
Since we cannot ‘‘see’’ God anywhere in the universe, Lewis
decided to place his focus upon humanity. Would there be any
evidence for God in ourselves? The answer for Lewis is ‘‘yes;’’
God can show himself to us ‘‘as an influence or a command
trying to get us to behave in a certain way’’ (MC: 19). It
logically follows then that the moral law reflects its source.
Someone is very interested in right conduct, and even when
bravery or honesty or faithfulness to one’s spouse is difficult or
dangerous, that law within continues to insist on the straight
thing. Since humans often fail to do the right thing, the source
of that law must hate much of what we do, or fail to do. We
are at odds with our Creator, and in danger of condemnation.
Now that Lewis has brought his readers to the realization of
a personal God who is attempting to guide them into right
behavior, and has confronted them with the fact that they
often fail, he can progress to the solution of this problem.
And of course, that’s where Christ and Christianity come in.
But first Lewis anticipates a thoughtful person asking how the
world came to be such a mess. It certainly doesn’t reflect in all
its wars, cruelty, and suffering the kind of place the author of
the moral law would create or desire.
Christianity comes to the rescue with the explanation Lewis
prefers. The world has become a dangerous place because an
evil being has made it so. The only other alternative is dualism:
the belief that two equal but opposite beings are engaged in an
eternal struggle for control. Lewis quickly dismisses this possibility by pointing out that an evil being cannot be the equal of
God, the good being. If the evil being has any kind of plan
or strategy for success, achievement is possible only by the use
of intelligence and the force of will. But these are positive
attributes in and of themselves; evil uses them for twisted
Lewis Reaches Out to His World
75
purposes. Evil, then, is only good gone bad; a parasite in the
end. And that is the answer Christianity provides. A powerful
angel has decided to rebel against God, and other angels (but
by no means all of them) have decided to join his cause. The
goal of Satan is to frustrate God’s purposes in this world and
since God’s purposes are focused upon us, we have become his
targets.
Chapter two set forth Lewis’s belief that Satan’s influence in
our world must be taken into account if we are to understand
the course of history. Lewis is to be commended for his honesty. He did not disguise the fact that any one who accepts his
invitation to embrace Christianity will find himself entering
enemy-occupied territory. ‘‘Christianity is the story of how the
rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and
is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.
When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret
wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious
to prevent us from going’’ (MC: 36).
Into this world gone bad comes God’s answer. For centuries
God worked with the Jews to reveal to them what he was like,
and then ‘‘there suddenly turns up a man who goes about
talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He
has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at
the end of time’’ (MC: 40). Lewis especially wanted his audience to grasp the significance of Jesus forgiving sins. ‘‘This
makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are
broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth
of any other speaker who is not God, these words would imply
what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by
any other character in history’’ (MC: 40).
With these dramatic words, Lewis reaches the point of
decision. Either Jesus is a lunatic or he is the Son of God.
But there is no other choice; no middle ground. Regular,
sane people do not make such claims and predictions. Even to
76 Lewis Reaches Out to His World
acclaim him as a great moral teacher, a prophet, or a compassionate leader is to sell him short. Madman or God-man are
the only two possibilities.
God’s Life in Us
So why did God send his Son into the world? Lewis answers
this question in two ways. The first way looks back in time. On
the cross, Jesus atoned for our sins. There are several views of
the atonement – oddly enough, Christians have never been
able to agree on which is best – but Lewis prefers the interpretation that Christ died to pay a debt that we are unable to
pay. The second way looks to the future: what does God intend
to accomplish in our lives after forgiving our sins? What does
he want from us?
There is no compromise in Lewis’s answer: God wants every
part of us. He demands perfection, and will never stop (unless
we resist him) until we are perfect. ‘‘This is the whole of
Christianity. There is nothing else . . . the Church exists for
nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little
Christs’’ (MC: 155).
Many people find this difficult to accept because they assume
that only God is perfect. But Lewis reminds us that God’s plan
for us includes more than just forgiveness of sins, though that
is certainly a wonderful gift. Christ not only gave his life for us,
he intends to give his life to us as well. We have by birth, Lewis
points out, Bios life – the Greek word for ‘‘natural life.’’ God
wants to give us spiritual or Zoe life – the kind of life he has
(MC: 123). In other words, we need more than improvement;
we need to be born again. We won’t become God, but we will
become perfect humans.
It won’t be easy; the natural Bios life is self-centered and
used to being in charge. Christ will expose it for what it is,
Lewis Reaches Out to His World 77
Lewis promises, if we allow him to. Jesus is, after all, ‘‘a living
Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He
was when He created the world, really coming and interfering
with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and
replacing it with the kind of self He has’’ (MC: 149). We
become moral creatures in three ways as this new life is
formed in us. God cleans us up inside, he helps us achieve
fair play and harmony with others, and finally puts us on the
right path in life: ‘‘the general purpose of human life as a
whole’’ (MC: 57). Just what we are as humans, and what we
are designed to do in this world, will be the subject of the next
chapter.
The implication of what Lewis is saying is there is no hope
for us outside of Christ, because he is the only perfect One who
died for our sins and who has the divine life we need. The
natural Bios life will never produce spiritual life. This clears up
what seems to be a problem in Genesis, where God told our
first parents not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. If they did, they would die that very day, and yet Adam
went on to live more than 900 years. But only Adam’s (and
Eve’s) natural life remained; the spiritual life was gone and the
same is true of all their descendants.
This need to be born from above is a central truth in
redemption. Lewis did well to emphasize it, for there are two
ancient and very popular misconceptions about it that have
survived until today. The first ‘‘theology’’ would agree: we
must be born again, and we will – many, many times until
we finally reach a state of nothingness and become ‘‘one’’ with
the universe. Millions upon millions of people in the East have
accepted this view, and reincarnation has even made inroads
into Christianity itself. But reincarnation offers nothing but a
series of existences meant to gradually improve the natural
life. Improvement is not the answer, Lewis reminds us; only
Christ’s spiritual life will do.
78 Lewis Reaches Out to His World
The other view also tries to get as close to the truth as
possible, and comes to us with optimism in its face. We have
been created in God’s image, but most of us have forgotten or
have never been told. And so we live much as animals, letting
the natural life rule us. What we need to know, and knowledge is the key here, is that there is still a spark (others prefer
the metaphor of a seed) of divine life within. Once we begin to
conduct ourselves in that realization and subdue the physical
part of ourselves with its appetites, we will realize that the goal
of our existence is to ultimately escape the physical world and
become spirit beings.
This view comes in many shapes and disguises, but they all
belong to the philosophy known as Gnosticism. Matter is
sinful and our bodies are a prison from which death will
release us. Since many of the early Christian leaders came
from a background filled with influences from Greek philosophy, Gnosticism soon became prominent in the church. By the
fourth century of the Christian era it would not be inaccurate
to say that there were two major ‘‘versions’’ of Christianity.
Gnosticism eventually was rejected as unorthodox, but not
before many were led to deny the humanity of Christ
(why would God contaminate himself with matter?), celibacy
became required of every priest, and original sin became defined as sex between Adam and Eve, rather than disobedience.
Gnosticism, in one form or another, may well be the most
popular and widespread belief system in the history of the
world, and Lewis thoroughly discredited it when he depicted
the attempts of NICE to achieve immortality by escape from
the body.
Returning to the life found only in Christ, it would appear
that Lewis has painted himself into a theological corner.
Ancient mythologies prepared their cultures for the time when
God entered history, died, and rose again. As God incarnate,
he is the only One who can atone for sin if we believe in him.
Lewis Reaches Out to His World
79
And he wants to purify us – to sanctify us – by giving us his life
to gradually replace our natural life. But what does this mean
for all of those who lived and died before Christ, or who have
lived in cultures not yet reached with the message?
There would seem to be no hope. Even if someone did
manage to lead a very good life, effort spent in serving and
loving others, while commendable, does not bring us divine
life. That comes only from a divine source. Untold billions
must be lost. But, Lewis reminds us, we must not look at this
situation from our perspective, limited as it is to time and
space. We experience time as past, present, and future, and
actually can act within it only ‘‘now’’ – in the present time
which will soon become past. But God is not so limited. All of
time is ‘‘now’’ for him. He has forever to listen to each of our
prayers and to watch each of us act. Judas did not betray Jesus
because his act of treachery was predicted in the Psalms and so
he had no choice but to fulfill prophecy. Lewis would say that
God saw Judas freely choose (under the influence of Satan,
the gospels tell us) to lead the priests and soldiers to Jesus in
the Garden of Gethsemane. And because Judas made that
choice, and because God is not limited by time as we are, he
was free to inspire David to compose a prophetic song about
what would occur a thousand years later.
Looking at humanity from God’s perspective outside of
time, or also from within all of time at once, the human race
would not appear to God as a lot of individual people, but as a
very complicated family tree showing every human connected
to every other human. And when Christ becomes man and
enters history, ‘‘the effect spreads through all mankind. It
makes a difference to people who lived before Christ as well
as people who lived after Him. It makes a difference to people
who have never heard of Him’’ (MC: 141). God is not limited
by time or space, and neither is his salvation. But when,
where, and how did God accomplish not only redemption for
80 Lewis Reaches Out to His World
everyone who has ever lived and ever will live, but also his
plan for perfecting us? The theology Lewis formed to answer
these questions will be the subject of chapter six.
Before then, Lewis has something to say about humanity.
We do not live alone on this planet; mankind is part of the
created order of things. Lewis saw our place as just above the
animals and just below angels, and also as having much in
common with both groups. Only when mankind becomes
reconciled with God’s help to the animal life within and also
what we share with angels will the third goal of morality be
realized: the general purpose of human life.
Chapter 4
Humanity in God’s Creation
‘‘By the touch and breath of Aslan, Narnia is born.’’
Illustration ß 2007 by Deborah Wilson Camp
82 Humanity in God’s Creation
And now, for the first time, the Lion was silent. He was going to
and fro among the animals. And every now and then he would go
up to two of them (always two at a time) and touch their noses
with his . . . The pairs which he had touched instantly left their
own kinds and followed him . . . The Lion, whose eyes never
blinked, stared at the animals as hard as if he was going to burn
them up with his mere stare. And gradually a change came over
them . . . the Lion opened his mouth, but no sound came from it;
he was breathing out, a long, warm breath; it seemed to sway all
the beasts as the wind sways a line of trees . . . Then there came a
swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or
from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children’s bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard
was saying: ‘‘Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak.
Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.’’
(MN: 115–16)
And so Narnia was born. What about our planet?
The Making of Humanity
By the time Lewis became a Christian and began to study the
Scriptures, Darwin’s views on the origin and development of life
were having a profound influence upon science and the church
alike. In addition to evolution, different branches of science
such as archaeology, geology, and astronomy were also challenging the Biblical account of six literal days of creation some
six thousand years ago. The universe, and our world, seemed
much more ancient than that; billions of years older.
Lewis, of course, was aware of these developments and
seems to have accepted the claims of science for the great age
of the universe. On the other hand, he did not relinquish
the Biblical description of humans as more than just animals.
Humanity in God’s Creation
83
At some point, he believed, God selected an anthropoid and
breathed into him his life so that he became fully human. (See,
for example, his letter to Sister Penelope in L: 417, January 10,
1952.) This view is one version of theistic evolution and by it
Lewis was able to accept the evidence for the gradual development of life on earth over millennia without ruling out
divine miracles to guide that development.
These selected humans were more than just beasts, they had
a new responsibility that came with this new life.
‘‘Creatures, I give you yourselves,’’ said the strong, happy voice
of Aslan. ‘‘I give to you forever this land of Narnia. I give you
the woods, the fruits, the rivers. I give you the stars and I give
you myself. The Dumb Beasts whom I have not chosen are
yours also. Treat them gently and cherish them but do not go
back to their ways lest you cease to be Talking Beasts. For out of
them you were taken and into them you can return. Do not
so.’’ (MN: 118)
But, sadly, humanity in this world did return.
For long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to
become the vehicle of humanity and the image of himself . . . Then, in the fullness of time, God caused to descend
upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a
new kind of consciousness which could say ‘‘I’’ and ‘‘me,’’
which knew God, which could make judgements [sic] of
truth, beauty, and goodness, and which was so far above time
that it could perceive time flowing past . . . Wholly commanding
himself, he commanded all lower lives with which he came into
contact. Even now we meet rare individuals who have a mysterious power of taming beasts . . . We do not know how many
of these creatures God made, nor how long they continued in
the Paradisal state. But sooner or later they fell. Someone or
something whispered that they could become as gods . . . They
wanted some corner in the universe of which they could say to
84 Humanity in God’s Creation
God, ‘‘This is our business, not yours.’’ But there is no such
corner. (PP: 77–80)
The result of the fall was discord.
The natural self since the Fall consists of body, soul, and spirit
all perverted & self centred and at odds with one another.
Animalness (the body & what arises from it) is not in itself
bad: what is bad is the rebellious relation in wh. it now stands
to the other parts. But its rebellion against spirit is less terrible
than spirit’s rebellion against God. (‘‘Letter to Mr. Lyell’’ in
CL II: 632; December 6, 1944)
This discord now affects everyone, because ‘‘a new species,
never made by God, had sinned itself into existence.’’ In a
rather poetic manner, Lewis describes God’s response to the
fall of man: ‘‘The world is a dance in which good, descending
from God, is disturbed by evil arising from the creatures, and
the resulting conflict is resolved by God’s own assumption of
the suffering nature which evil produces’’ (PP: 83–4).
Many conservative Christians do not accept Lewis’s view of
human evolution, but I am certain he would prefer to stress
what they have in common with him: humanity has fallen
and no amount of effort from us will change our sinful nature.
As Lewis stressed in Mere Christianity, the only hope we have
begins with the incarnation (‘‘God’s own assumption of the
suffering nature’’), then the atonement, and ends by being
transformed by the divine nature offered us in Christ.
Lewis is certainly Biblical in his description of the strained
relations between our body and soul and between us and God
as a result of original sin. But he doesn’t stop there. The discord
also now exists between us and the physical world. Everything
has been affected; what is above us (God and angels), what is on
our level (others) and even the parts of ourselves, and what is
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below us in the created order. Yet, in our fallen condition,
though relations between humans and nature are strained,
they still exist. To be in a body means we are part of the physical
world and still have been appointed to care for this planet. Let’s
take a closer look at what we are in relation to creation.
Lewis had a healthy, balanced approach to the body, even
though his own was too clumsy for any sport but swimming.
I have a kindly feeling for the old rattle-trap. Through it God
showed me that whole side of His beauty which is embodied in
colour, sound, smell and size. No doubt it has often led me
astray: but not half so often, I suspect, as my soul has led it
astray. For the spiritual evils which we share with the devils
(pride, spite) are far worse than what we share with the beasts:
and sensuality really arises more from the imagination than
from the appetites; which, if left merely to their own animal
strength, and not elaborated by our imagination, would be
fairly easily managed. (LAL: 108; November 26, 1962)
This letter describes well the advantages, and dangers, that
arise from sharing the natures of both animals and angels.
Lewis feels no shame from having a body; God made us that
way. Lewis gives humanity’s twofold nature a humorous twist
when he has Screwtape call his human patient an amphibian!
‘‘As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they
inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed
to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations
are in continual change, for to be in time means to change’’
(SL: 36–7). Let’s consider first our relationship to animals.
Humans and Animals
Most people think of English literature or children’s stories or
books and articles that encourage Christians when they pay
86 Humanity in God’s Creation
tribute to Lewis, but there is another side to Lewis as well. He
thought and wrote so much about animals that any discussion
of his theology must include this subject, and it’s about time, for
animals are probably the most neglected subject in the current
discussion of Lewis. (The same could be said of Christian theology in general.) Janine Goffar’s very helpful index of subjects
in Lewis’s theological works provides a rough estimate of the
importance of animals for Lewis. She lists seventeen entries for
angels, but fifty-five for animals, not counting other entries for
cats, creatures, dogs, and pets! (C. S. Lewis Index: 29–33).
To begin with, Lewis loved animals.
Such natural love twixt beast and man we find
That children all desire an animal book.
(‘‘Eden’s Courtesy’’ in P: 98)
If the pain and suffering humans experience concerned him,
the pains of animals presented him with an even greater
theological problem. Taking into account original sin, humans
in a sense deserve the consequences of disobedience. The
important thing for Lewis about pain is that God can use trials
for good purposes. ‘‘I assume that the process of purification
will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition; partly
because most real good that has been done me in this life has
involved it’’ (LTM: 109).
But the same is not true of animals. They neither deserve
pain, nor are they helped by it.
The animal creation is a strange mystery. We can make some
attempt to understand human suffering: but the sufferings of
animals from the beginning of the world until now (inflicted
not only by us but by one another) – what is one to think? And
again, how strange that God brings us into such intimate relations with creatures of whose real purpose and destiny we
remain forever ignorant. (LAL: 106, October 26, 1962)
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And again: ‘‘We know neither what they are nor why they
are’’ (‘‘The Pains of Animals’’ in GID: 167).
Lewis found it difficult to reconcile undeserved animal pain
with the original creation that God pronounced ‘‘very, very
good’’ (Gen 1:31). He ventured that since animals existed
before us (a nod to evolution or at least the great age of the
earth), and since sin began with the angels, the creation may
have been affected by fallen angels before humans existed. In
their corrupted state, many animals now survive by eating
other animals, while God’s original plan for them was to eat
plants. Lewis based this view on Genesis 1:29, where God tells
Adam and Eve that he has given them plants to eat; and
Genesis 1:30, where birds and land animals are also given all
plants to eat. That some plants eat other plants is not sinful,
since they are already given to animals and humans for food.
The Satanic corruption of the beasts would therefore be analogous, in one respect, to the Satanic corruption of man. For one
result of man’s fall was that his animality fell back from the
humanity into which it had been taken up but which could no
longer rule it. In the same way, animality may have been
encouraged to slip back into behaviour proper to vegetables.
(PP: 135)
Since Adam and Eve were given dominion and responsibility for this planet, it follows that we, their offspring, can also
‘‘lift up’’ or ‘‘pull down’’ our environment. The land must still
be farmed, though thorns will grow more readily than food
plants (Gen 3:17–18). Lewis insists mankind must strive to
relate to animals and treat them well; they are an essential
part of the environment and we need them for many reasons.
Sin, whether from the fall of Satan or man, or both, has
created a rift between us and them so that they now fear us
(Gen 9:2), but the gap can with effort be bridged. The potential
to do them good or evil still exists. The task of managing the
88 Humanity in God’s Creation
earth will be more difficult now that sin has entered the
picture, but the responsibility remains.
Lewis thought this responsibility important because it gives
mankind the ‘‘dignity of causality’’ and lifts us above the level
of mere parasites (‘‘Work and Prayer’’ in GID: 106). God is
self-sufficient and doesn’t really need us, but he is pleased to
give us a small but real part to play. We are ‘‘sub-creators,’’
meaning we were made in the image of God the Creator. Now,
here on earth, God gives us the opportunity to express that
creativity and cause things to happen. He planted a garden
once, but only once; since then it’s our turn to imitate what he
has done and to use what he has made. And in the future,
Lewis expected God to continue using us when the time comes
for him to redeem all creation from the effects of sin.
I will take up the redemption of creation in chapter seven,
but for the present, Lewis urges the ethical treatment of
animals. Yes, humanity is above them in the created order,
but then angels are above us. ‘‘We may find it difficult to
formulate a human right of tormenting beasts in terms
which would not equally imply an angelic right of tormenting
men’’ (‘‘Vivisection’’ in GID: 226). Lewis also saw danger not
just to animals but to humans as well, since many scientists
who cut up animals for research are not Christians, and so for
them, humans are just a higher order of animals. ‘‘Once the
old Christian idea of a total difference in kind between man
and beast has been abandoned, then no argument for experiments on animals can be found which is not also an argument
for experiments on inferior men’’ (‘‘Vivisection’’ in GID: 227).
Cruelty to animals may not stop with animals.
Animals in the Space Trilogy
Lewis felt so strongly about the mistreatment of animals and
its potential to include humans that he even wrote a plot with
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himself (as Ransom; both were unmarried, professors, and
philologists who enjoyed long walks) as the victim. Out of the
Silent Planet begins with Ransom out on a walking tour; and,
while seeking shelter for the night, he meets up with two
unfriendly characters, Devine and Weston, in some sort of
altercation with a retarded man named Harry. Angered at
Ransom’s intrusion, Weston remarks, ‘‘We ought to have a
dog in this place’’ (OSP: 12). Devine responds by pointing out
that they once did have a dog (named Tartar), but that Weston
had already used it in an (evidently fatal!) experiment.
The cause of the struggle with Harry is not at first clear, but
we later discover that Devine and Weston have already visited
the planet Mars, a world under the authority of a spiritual
being called Oyarsa. When Oyarsa summoned Weston and
Devine to welcome them to his planet, they were too afraid
to go. Since the planet seemed to lack earth’s technology, they
assumed the inhabitants were savages and suspected they
were really looking for a human to sacrifice (OSP: 34, 122).
To appease the natives, they returned to earth to get Harry as
the sacrifice.
By surprising them in the act, Ransom prevents the abduction of Harry. Devine then recognizes Ransom as a former
classmate at Wedenshaw, and they exchange the usual pleasantries. In the course of the conversation, Devine does a little
probing and discovers Ransom is alone, on vacation, and
wouldn’t be missed by anyone for a long time if he didn’t
return. Always quick to seize an opportunity, Devine puts a
drug in Ransom’s whiskey. When Ransom later begins to
regain consciousness, he overhears Devine urging Weston to
abduct Ransom instead of Harry, who is already missed by his
mother. At first, Weston is reluctant to do this; after all, Harry
is ‘‘incapable of serving humanity and only too likely to propagate idiocy,’’ but Ransom is fully ‘‘human!’’ (OSP: 19). But at
Devine’s urging, Weston overcomes his scruples, Ransom’s
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attempt to escape is prevented, and they set out for Mars with
the unwilling Ransom as the new sacrificial victim. What
Lewis was warning against in his essay on vivisection has
become the plot of the novel. When circumstances allow,
scientific research will move from animals to defective people
and then even to normal people.
But what lies behind Weston’s desire to leave earth and reach
other planets? Lewis needs to look no farther than the colonization of various nations by western (perhaps Lewis meant
‘‘Weston’’ to signify ‘‘western’’) cultures over the past few
centuries to find the answer. Those who have the power subjugate those who are less advanced to obtain more resources,
more Lebensraum (‘‘living space’’), and even more power. And
when there is no more land to claim, then (many believe)
humanity must find new worlds before this one dies. Surely
not all science is undertaken for this reason, but Lewis does
believe that with its powers and promises, science can easily
seduce us into thinking that more and more research will
eventually conquer ageing and even death. And in our fallen
condition, fear of death will lead to – indeed, has already led to –
a willingness to sacrifice untold numbers of animals, and, at
times, even humans, for the cause.
‘‘Life,’’ explains Weston to the Oyarsa of Mars, ‘‘is greater
than any system of morality; her claims are absolute. It is not
by tribal taboos and copy-book maxims that she has pursued
her relentless march from the amoeba to man and from man
to civilization’’ (OSP: 136). Speaking for Lewis, Ransom has a
different perspective: ‘‘I happen to disagree, even about vivisection’’ (OSP: 27). Ever the vigilant Christian, Lewis is not
convinced by those who believe modern science can ignore
human rights in its mission to achieve immortality for the
human race. Each individual human has an eternal soul, and
so no person has the right to sacrifice another against his will
to ensure the survival of humanity.
Humanity in God’s Creation 91
In Perelandra, the next volume of the science fiction trilogy,
he presents the positive side of our interaction with animals as
well as the negative. Ransom watches the Lady, or Tinidril, the
Eve of her planet (Venus), as she lovingly responds to the
animals on her world. ‘‘There was in her face an authority,
in her caress a condescension which by taking seriously the
inferiority of her adorers made them somehow less inferior –
raised them from the status of pets to that of slaves’’ (PER: 56).
‘‘The beasts in your world seem almost rational,’’ said Ransom. ‘‘We make them older every day,’’ she answered (PER: 56).
For Lewis, harmony between man and beast reflects God’s will
for every world and it is only natural on this unfallen planet.
And that includes ‘‘raising’’ the more intelligent animals
(making them ‘‘older’’), not simply coexisting with them.
When Lewis describes Ransom back on earth in That Hideous
Strength, he is careful to point out that Ransom’s household
has this same harmony with animals – from Mr. Bultitude the
bear, to Pinch the cat, and even to mice that appear to remove
the crumbs from the floor when summoned by a whistle.
In sharp contrast to the Lady, Weston, who comes to Perelandra possessed by Satan, displays a sickening hatred for
every living thing. Ransom first discovers this when he finds
the mutilated frog-like creature and, with great difficulty,
forces himself to kill it and so end its misery. But the worst is
still to come; he discovers a trail of more mutilated frogs and
following it finds Weston ‘‘quietly and almost surgically inserting his forefinger, with its long sharp nail, under the skin
behind the creature’s head and ripping it open. Ransom
had not noticed before that Weston had such remarkable
nails’’ (PER: 94).
Fingernails like scalpels, creatures like frogs, the animals
first used for dissection by nearly every beginning biology
student – the connection between vivisection and Weston’s
gruesome activity on Perelandra is too obvious to overlook.
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Further examples of such cruelty in Perelandra could be given,
but suffice it to say that when Lewis has the opportunity to
describe the devil, he goes to great lengths to portray him as
having a deep hatred for all life. Surely Lewis is not saying that
every scientist involved in vivisection is satanically motivated,
but I believe he is implying that an unfeeling cruelty to animals or man, even in the name of science, progress, or whatever, ultimately has its roots in Satan.
In That Hideous Strength, Lewis continues to focus on vivisection as he describes the struggle between good and evil.
NICE hires Mark to manipulate the public through misleading
articles in the press. In this way, carefully avoiding certain
words, the real nature of the experiments at Belbury can be
concealed. As Feverstone (a new name for Devine, reflecting
his ambition to exploit Mars for its gold) puts it:
. . . it does make a difference how things are put. For instance,
if it were even whispered that the NICE wanted powers to
experiment on criminals, you’d have all the old women
of both sexes up in arms and yapping about humanity. Call
it re-education of the maladjusted, and you have them
all slobbering with delight that the brutal era of retributive
punishment has at last come to an end. (THS: 43)
Lewis obviously knew that to oppose vivisection was to appear
to many as a ‘‘yapping old woman’’ who derives her only
companionship from her dog or cat. Mark sees such people
when he and Cosser visit a village destined to be swept away in
the name of progress. They see all the riffraff: ‘‘The recalcitrant
and backward laborer . . . the wastefully supported pauper . . . the elderly rentier (to make matters worse she had a
fat old dog with her)’’ (THS: 87). Lewis here reminds us that
these too are a part of humanity and their lives, humble as
they might be, are of eternal value before God. Even for a great
scientific cause they must not be sacrificed.
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93
Lewis has made his case by now, but the revenge with
which he concludes the Ransom trilogy reveals how deeply
he feels about the infliction of pain upon animals. Just as
mankind first reached toward the Heavens via the Tower of
Babel in hopes of escaping God’s judgment should another
flood come, so Lewis depicts Belbury, the town where NICE
is headquartered, as another concerted effort of man to take
his destiny into his own hands, this time through science. To
sustain the parallel, Lewis brings upon Belbury the same judgment as Babel received – the confusing of their speech by God.
But Lewis adds an extra touch – one which no doubt gave him
much satisfaction – a touch not strictly necessary for the plot.
He has the magician Merlin, God’s instrument, release the
animals NICE kept for purposes of experimentation and send
them to the banquet hall ready for battle. Their appearance
causes panic, and those not killed by the animals are trampled
in the stampede.
Merlin has a special mission for Bultitude, Ransom’s bear
which has been captured by NICE. He is sent to the room
where the Head (the ‘‘scientific’’ version of the resurrection)
is kept; once there, the bear dispatches Wither and destroys
the Head itself. Calamity comes upon NICE from the angelic
world as well. The Macrobes, the evil spiritual beings controlling the people of Belbury, have themselves in a sense been
practicing vivisection. The human head was removed from its
body to become their mouthpiece at their direction. When
Belbury falls, the Macrobes continue to manipulate their
slaves so as to destroy them now that their usefulness is
over. Belbury vivisected animals until they were maimed
and broken, and also tried to use fallen angels for their own
ends, so poetic justice is served when Lewis brings calamity
from above and below.
In reflection, Lewis’s emphasis upon vivisection in the Space
Trilogy is remarkable. Not only does he persuasively present
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the arguments for both pro and con positions, but he weaves
the theme into the plots of all three novels and even orchestrates revenge without mercy. These subplots testify to the
deep love for God’s creation that Lewis had, a love which led
Lewis to oppose with his head and his heart man’s inhumanity
to man and to animals – an inhumanity which for Lewis
ultimately had its roots in Satan himself.
In the shadow of World War II, the period when Lewis
wrote the Space Trilogy, Lewis’s passionate feelings on this
subject are to be expected. Perhaps more surprising is the
lack of response from most Christians to painful experiments
on animals which are still widespread today, especially for the
testing of cosmetics – hardly a great scientific cause.
But Lewis is deadly serious. The Third Reich convincingly
demonstrated how quickly men will turn upon man when the
constraints of civilized society are removed. Certainly, Christianity will be threatened with extinction in such circumstances; civilization itself will soon follow.
If we choose vivisection by rationalizing from within an evolutionary framework, vivisection will win a great advance in the
triumph of ruthless, non-moral utilitarianism over the old
world of ethical law; a triumph in which we, as well as animals,
are already victims, and of which Dachau and Hiroshima mark
the more recent achievements. In justifying cruelty to animals
we put ourselves on the animal level. We choose the jungle and
must abide by that choice. (‘‘Vivisection’’ in GID: 228)
The Biblical mandate
The message is clear: ‘‘Do no unnecessary harm.’’ But what
was Lewis suggesting when he had Tinidril say ‘‘We make
them older every day?’’ He believed that our God-given
responsibility for this planet (‘‘Be fruitful and multiply, and
fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over . . . every
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living thing that moves upon the earth:’’ Gen 1:28) means that
humans can improve on, or ‘‘raise,’’ what God has created. Just
as we develop new and better strains of plant life, so also we
bring some animals into our houses or pastures, and under our
influence they are healthier, they live longer, and develop more
personality than ever possible in the wild (PP: 44). Who knows
what potential animals might have? ‘‘There are (in animals)
instincts I had never dreamed of: big with a promise of real
morality’’ (‘‘To Dom Bede Griffiths,’’ L: 422, May 28, 1952).
Only in this context, says Lewis, will the significance of
animals fully emerge. ‘‘The beasts are to be understood only
in their relation to man and, through man, to God’’ (PP: 138).
Why? Because, as noted above, ‘‘Man was appointed by God
to have dominion over the beasts, and everything a man does
to an animal is either a lawful exercise, or a sacrilegious abuse,
of an authority by divine right’’ (PP: 138).
I’m not sure how far Lewis believed the ‘‘promise of real
morality’’ could develop in at least some animals, but he does
have a point, as any animal lover knows. Once tamed and
guided by us, many animals ‘‘become’’ far more than they
ever could have in the wild. But how can we help them fulfill
their potential for morality or at least some degree of selfhood
and personality if we ourselves are immoral in our treatment
of them? The answer is Christ’s divine life, as Lewis argued in
Mere Christianity. Once the four cardinal and three Christian
virtues have been formed in a person, fair play with others
becomes possible. Lewis includes animals in this ‘‘others,’’ and
by extension, the whole planet itself. Morality must extend to
the general purpose of human life, and part of that purpose is
our God-given dominion over the natural world.
Nor will that aspect of our purpose die when God makes
all things new. Our relationship with creation, including the
animals, will increase, in Lewis’s view. Somehow, when God
raises us in the resurrection, he will also raise the creation,
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using us to accomplish this and giving us a higher level of the
dignity of causality. But this is the subject of chapter seven, so
the discussion of the future of animals must end for now.
Has Lewis gone too far in his love of animals? Is there any
Biblical basis for how he feels toward them? Well, we certainly
won’t find in the Scriptures any passage that comes close to a
modern understanding of ecology, but there are clues nevertheless. Lewis does accurately reflect Genesis 1:26–30, the passage where God gives mankind dominion over fish, birds, and
land animals. And in Genesis 2, God acknowledges that Adam is
alone and that he needs a suitable partner. But before God
creates Eve, he brings birds and land animals before Adam so
that he can give them names. Names are very important in a
Biblical context, and the understanding here would be that
Adam was able to give a name appropriate for the kind of animal
before him and also had the authority to do so. Lewis includes
this same authority in Perelandra, his imaginary version of the
Garden of Eden. Ransom hears Tor, the Adam of the planet,
mention a place by name. ‘‘And Ransom realized that the King
had uttered not an observation but an enactment’’ (PER: 180).
The name-giving in Genesis also served to reveal to Adam,
and all of his descendants, that animals are close enough to us
for us to relate to them, even give names to them, and yet
none of them have the potential to be the compatible helper
we need, including a sexual partner. So God creates Eve, and
when Adam sees her, we get another glimpse into his perceptiveness. He recognizes that she is made from the same flesh
and bones as he, and so is on the same level as he (Gen 2:23).
As such, she will be the helper that he needs and will rule over
the animals with him.
The next significant interaction between God and man
comes when Moses receives the law to give to the tribes of
Israel. A significant part of the Torah has to do with the land.
God makes it clear to begin with that the land belongs to him
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(Lev 25:23). He also explains to Israel that he is displacing the
cultures that live in Canaan and giving the land to them
instead because of their immoral lifestyle, which included
taking animals as sexual partners. Their practices are so evil
that the land itself is attempting to expel them, and if the
Israelites adopt the same practices, the land will also turn on
them (Lev 18:24–30). But if they observe God’s laws, God will
bless the land so that it will yield plentiful crops.
Perhaps it seems rather strange for God to be concerned
about dirt. But he is for our sakes: our natural lives depend
upon the soil, and God intends to achieve his purposes with us
here in this natural environment. If we are to prosper, we
must till the land with care and wisely manage the animals
we use for food, clothes, assistance in our labor, and companionship. Out of concern for us, God established the week of six
days of work and one day of rest. And he also told Israel to let
the land rest for a year after cultivating it for six years; thus
giving the land the same amount of rest as humans. And we
see the beginnings of wildlife management in the law; when
the Israelites came upon a nest, they could take the young but
were not to harm the mother. Why? So that ‘‘it will go well
with you and you may live long’’ (Deut 22:6–7).
.
.
.
To be human, then, is to share a physical nature with the
beasts.
To be fully human is to rule over this planet and care for it,
including the animals.
To be fallen makes this responsibility more difficult, but the
responsibility remains.
Lewis faithfully reflects this Biblical perspective. He reminds us
that our relationship with God includes our relationship with
what he has made, and this relationship, including animals
and ecology, should be a part of Christian theology.
98 Humanity in God’s Creation
Humans and Angels
Fallen angels
I sometimes wonder if we have even begun to understand what
is involved in the very concept of creation. If God will create, He
will make something to be, and yet to be not Himself. To be
created is, in some sense, to be ejected or separated. Can it be that
the more perfect the creature is, the further this separation must
at some point be pushed? It is saints, not common people, who
experience the ‘‘dark night.’’ It is men and angels, not beasts,
who rebel. Inanimate matter sleeps in the bosom of the Father.
(LTM: 44)
Lewis approached angels as he did many other topics, with a
combination of logic and Biblical truth augmented by imagination. He believed in their existence, and he accepted the New
Testament perspective, more fully developed than in the Old,
of one fallen angel, with the title of Satan (accuser or slanderer), leading other fallen angels in a rebellion against God.
Lewis follows Scripture in referring to these angels as devils,
but it’s difficult to tell from his writings if he distinguished
between devils and demons. He certainly would have noticed
the many references to them in the gospels, but for his purposes, the important thing was to contrast between good and
evil rather than get into details that would complicate the
discussion.
Biblical references to fallen angels, including Satan, made
sense to Lewis. They, not God, were responsible for much of
the evil that persuaded the pre-Christian Lewis to be an atheist. But Satan is not God’s equal, as we found in chapter three.
Any being that chooses to do evil must have such things as
existence, intelligence, and will, and is using those good qualities for bad purposes. Badness, then, is only spoiled goodness
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that originally came from God, and this is why Satan is not
God’s equal (MC: 34–5).
Yet Satan fascinated Lewis, as his poetry shows. An angel
that challenges God must be powerful indeed; an angel
that has so deeply affected our world must be intelligent
and following a plan. Compared to him, we are weak and
half-hearted sinners, often partly ignorant of what we are
doing, and thoughtlessly sinning because we blindly follow
the examples of others, not because we really want to.
Thou only art alternative to God, oh dark
And burning island among spirits . . .
Only thy absolute lust is worth the thinking of.
All else is weak disguising of the wishful heart . . .
Lord, open not too often my weak eyes to this.
(‘‘Wormwood’’ in P: 87)
The Christian understanding of Satan is that he, joined by
other fallen angels, now works to frustrate the purposes of
God. If he is not strong enough to directly attack an omnipotent God, he can express his rebellion by focusing upon God’s
creation – especially us, the object of his love. But how can
fallen creatures manage to work together, Lewis asks, and
what can they do to us humans? Lewis gives his views on
these subjects in The Screwtape Letters, an imaginary correspondence between devils which has become a classic.
In The Screwtape Letters, all of the thirty-one letters are written by Screwtape (a senior devil with many successes to his
credit) to Wormwood, a junior devil who has been given his
first human ‘‘patient.’’ Screwtape gives Wormwood much
practical advice, but things go from bad to worse. The patient
becomes a Christian and falls in love with a Christian woman.
Before Wormwood can reclaim him from the Enemy (God),
his patient is killed by a bomb during World War II.
100 Humanity in God’s Creation
Wormwood comes for the patient’s soul after his death, but it
is too late and he will pay for his failure by becoming food for
other devils.
Scripture does not directly explain how Satan coordinates
his efforts with other devils, but Lewis finds a plausible
explanation by observing fallen humanity.
Bad angels, like bad men, are entirely practical. They have two
motives. The first is fear of punishment . . . Their second motive
is a kind of hunger. I feign that devils can, in a spiritual sense,
eat one another; and us. Even in human life we have seen the
passion to dominate, almost to digest, one’s fellow . . . In
Hell . . . the stronger spirit – there are perhaps no bodies to
impede the operation – can really and irrevocably suck the
weaker into itself and permanently gorge its own being on the
weaker’s outraged personality. (SL: xi)
The principle Lewis found in human and diabolical societies
is the domination of the weaker by the stronger. And this
absorption of the will resembles the physical act of ingesting food. So, Lewis stresses, when a human relationship has
deteriorated into the domination of one by the other, and the
acceptance of such domination – and such co-dependent relationships are common – a little bit of Hell is coming into being
on earth.
Lewis returned to The Screwtape Letters seventeen years later
when he added Screwtape’s commencement address at the
Tempter’s Training College. Through Screwtape’s remarks
Lewis is commenting on the sad condition of the world. Education has become so deficient and the church so weak that
most people today are, in Screwtape’s view, only ‘‘vermin . . .
muddled in mind,’’ ‘‘undersexed morons,’’ and ‘‘residual puddles of what once was soul’’ (SPT: 155–6). Conditioned by
advertising to conform and following rock stars and other
charismatic celebrities, they thoughtlessly fall into adultery
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101
with others, accept bribes at work, and so forth with scarcely a
thought about right and wrong. From Screwtape’s perspective,
feeding on such souls makes for a very insipid meal, but at
least the banquet makes up in quantity for what it lacks in
quality.
After the meal comes the toast, and Screwtape is glad to find
there are still some bottles of ‘‘vintage Pharisee’’ to enjoy. The
wine owes its quality to Satan’s success in undermining Christianity itself; a major triumph indeed! Those who reduced the
faith to ‘‘rules, relics and rosaries’’ are now against their will
blended together with others who reduced the gospel to legalities like abstinence from wine, cards and the theatre. ‘‘How
they hated each other up there where the sun shone! How
much more they hate each other now that they are forever
conjoined but not reconciled’’ (SPT: 171).
The point of this infernal correspondence is that we are
loved by God and are therefore targets of God’s enemies. The
message is not one of hopeless despair, even though fallen
angels are much more powerful than we. God’s protection is
always present; otherwise, fallen angels could easily overcome
humanity. Fortunately, they have very limited access to us, as
Lewis indicates in several letters when Wormwood’s patient
receives divine aid at crucial times. Nor does Lewis think that
humans would be less vulnerable to the enemy if only we
did not have bodies. Satan will attack by that route if he can;
think of gluttony and sexual immorality, for example. But the
excellent wine for Screwtape’s toast did not come from those
kinds of sins, but from the hatred of Catholics for Protestants
and vice versa.
Lewis gladly owns up to being an amphibian because God
made him that way. What God creates is good, and since Satan
can’t himself create anything, he can only tempt us to use
what we are, body or soul, in ways, times, or degrees that
God has forbidden. What is ‘‘straight’’ must be twisted. And
102 Humanity in God’s Creation
the animal parts of us have their physical limitations. We can
only eat so much. But what we share with the angels, Lewis
cautions us, has more potential for evil. What limit does the
body impose upon envy, greed, selfish ambition, sloth, spite,
and, of course, pride – the sin Satan knows best? None whatsoever.
How can humans avoid being a ‘‘meal’’ for the enemy?
Lewis has already given the answer: by letting God replace
the sinful nature with his divine nature. ‘‘I have come that
you might have life, and have it abundantly’’ (John 10:10).
And that nature is ‘‘full and flows over.’’ In contrast, devils are
‘‘empty and would be filled’’ (SL: 38). Lewis had John’s words
in mind when he had Satan say through Weston in Perelandra,
‘‘it is for this that I came here, that you may have Death
in abundance’’ (PER: 98; the opposite of John 10:10). Life or
death, fullness or emptiness, domination of others or serving
them; these are the choices Lewis emphasizes throughout his
writings.
Good angels
Given the infernal perspective of The Screwtape Letters, it’s not
surprising that good angels are mostly ignored in that correspondence. But Lewis often wrote about them elsewhere, and
accepted their presence in the universe. Like humans, they
have God-given responsibilities, including guiding heavenly
bodies to ensure their regular movement. This in turn preserves the regularity of seasons and years for us. Pre-Christian
Jews believed the same.
Like us, angels have minds, but unlike us, no bodies. They are
therefore spirits, or ‘‘naked minds.’’ ‘‘We have an immediate
and intuitive grasp only of axioms and have to seek all other
knowledge by the laborious process of discursive thinking.
They are wholly intuitive; concepts are as palpable to them as
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103
apples or pennies are to us. In fact, their reason is to ours
as noon to dusk’’ (‘‘Imagination and Thought’’ in SMRL: 53).
In medieval Christian theology, angels are arranged into a
hierarchy, and most of these ‘‘ranks’’ have nothing to do with
us. Lewis lists the highest three as Seraphim, Cherubim, and
Thrones, and these spirit beings guard the throne of God and
offer unceasing praise. The next group consists of Dominations, Virtues, and Powers. These oversee nature; we might
call them the deacons of the universe. The lowest classes are
involved with human affairs. Principalities guide the destiny of
nations, and Archangels and Angels are concerned with individuals. Lewis notes that the angel Gabriel who was sent to
Mary to tell her she would bear a son is identified as an
Archangel (Luke 1:26–38; ‘‘Imagination and Thought’’ in
SMRL: 53–4). Lewis knew, of course, that the Bible was not
so specific as to give us such a hierarchy, but it does mention
many ranks or kinds of spirit beings and it logically follows that
they relate to each other in some kind of hierarchical order.
Lewis speaks of the part good angels play in the human
drama when Wormwood’s patient in The Screwtape Letters
dies. He begins to look around in the spirit world and sees
good angels for the first time.
He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they
would look, and even doubted their existence. But when he
saw them he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in
his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he
could say to them, one by one, not ‘‘Who are you’’ but ‘‘So it
was you all the time.’’ (SL: 147)
Angels are prominent all through Biblical history, and Lewis
assumes they still play a (generally invisible) part both in the
course of nations and individual human lives. As Hebrews
1:14 asks of angels: ‘‘Are they not all ministering spirits sent
104 Humanity in God’s Creation
to serve in behalf of those who are about to inherit salvation?’’
Thankfully, we are not alone in what Lewis called the Great
War.
Between Animals and Angels
In conclusion, Lewis preferred to view humanity not in isolation, but in terms of what mankind shares with the animal
kingdom and with angels. This unique place in the order of
creation makes possible fellowship with and responsibility for
the beasts, and also the potential for life in the spirit world and
fellowship with God. The body is not a source of sin or something Christians should be ashamed of; Lewis forcefully rejects
Gnosticism. Bodies do after all have some privileges not even
angels enjoy.
. . . the senses’ witchery
Guards us, like air, from Heavens too big to see . . .
Yet here, within this tiny, charm’d interior,
This parlour of the brain, their Maker shares
With living men some secrets in a privacy
Forever ours, not theirs.
(‘‘On Being Human’’ in P: 35)
Only through the body come the beauties of nature and only
by means of it can humanity fulfill its God-given responsibility
to care for this world. And both body and soul have a future in
the theology of Lewis. Until then, both must be guarded against
the techniques of Screwtape. Edmund’s desire to rule over his
brother and sisters (pride of soul) played on the appetites of his
body and made him susceptible to the lure of Turkish Delight.
The addiction brought him under the power of the White
Witch, and he betrayed his own sisters and brother.
Chapter 5
Walking by Faith
‘‘The professor believed Lucy was telling the truth.’’
Illustration ß 2007 by Deborah Wilson Camp
106 Walking by Faith
Poor Lucy! No one believed her when she told her brothers and
sister about the new world she discovered at the back of the
wardrobe in the spare room. Even after Edmund visited Narnia,
things didn’t get any better. Out of pure meanness, he told the
others that he and Lucy were only pretending. Lucy ran from
the room in tears. In the morning, Peter and Susan decide to
visit the professor, who listens carefully to the whole story.
As they discuss the possibility that Lucy is lying, they admit
to the professor that Lucy always has been the one who told
the truth, not Edmund. So then might she be mad? After all, a
strange world at the back of a wardrobe is rather unusual, to
say the least. But the professor observes: ‘‘One has only to look
at her and talk to her to see that she is not mad’’ (LWW: 45).
The children don’t know what to say; the only other choice is
so unbelievable.
Logic! Said the Professor half to himself. Why don’t they teach
logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either
your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth.
You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious that she is not
mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence
turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth. (LWW: 45)
But, the children protest, she was gone for only a minute or so;
there wasn’t time for her to have hours of adventures.
That is the very thing that makes her story so likely to be true,
said the Professor. If there really is a door in this house that
leads to some other world . . . I should not be at all surprised to
find that that other world had a separate time of its own; so that
however long you stayed there it would never take up any of
our time. On the other hand, I don’t think many girls of her age
would invent that idea of themselves. If she had been pretending, she would have hidden for a reasonable time before coming out and telling her story. (LWW: 46)
Walking by Faith 107
All this is quite remarkable. Lewis, a highly educated university
professor, is teaching that the intellect, informed by the senses, is
not always an accurate guide when God is involved. His ways,
and nature, are above our understanding. In fact, the mind can
even get in the way of our faith. Lewis thought this so important
he wrote at least a dozen definitions of faith. Essentially, they all
come down to this: believing God and his word despite moods
that change, the intellect that questions, difficult circumstances –
anything that would challenge the truthfulness of God.
The Myth of Cupid and Psyche According to Apuleius
Lewis was attracted to myths both before and after his conversion because they often contained ‘‘divine truth falling on
human imagination’’ (M: 139). He was particularly fascinated
by the myth Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass, written by Lucius
Apuleius Platonicus in the second century of the Christian era,
but perhaps originating much earlier. This particular story did
not involve the death and reviving of a god that benefited the
world, but Lewis did find in it insights that would benefit
Christians. He adapted the story to emphasize what he viewed
as important, and expanded it into a novel told from the
perspective of a woman.
Apuleius wrote about the marriage of Cupid and Psyche.
Cupid was the son of Venus, the goddess of love, and Psyche
was the youngest of three daughters born to a king and queen.
She was so beautiful that people neglected the worship of
Venus. In her jealousy, Venus ordered her son Cupid, who
already had a reputation for mischief for shooting people who
were incompatible with his arrows, to do likewise to Psyche, so
that she would fall in love with the worst sort of man.
The plan went awry when Cupid looked upon her beauty.
Falling in love with her, he prepared a palace for her with
108 Walking by Faith
every luxury provided. The love was mutual, but he visited
her only during the night, for she was not to see his face. In
time, Psyche asked that her sisters be allowed to visit, and
Cupid gave reluctant consent. They enjoyed the richness of
the palace but were consumed by jealousy and plotted to ruin
her happiness. Her husband must be a terrible serpent; why
else does he conceal his appearance?
Cupid finally gave in to their logic, and uncovered a lamp to
gaze upon his face. But a drop of oil fell from the lamp upon his
shoulder, he awoke, rebuked her, and vanished. In her despair,
Psyche tried to drown herself, but the god Pan prevented her,
telling her not to try again. Eventually, she fell into Venus’s
power, who treated her like a slave and gave her impossible
tasks to complete. First, she had to sort out large stacks of seeds
and was aided by ants. Next, she was sent to get golden wool
from dangerous sheep. A reed by a river bank showed her
where some of their wool had been caught on the bushes.
The third task was to bring a cup of water from the river Styx
in the underworld, and this task was accomplished for her by
an eagle. Finally, Venus sent her to the underworld to bring
back in a box the beauty of Persephone, the Queen of the
Dead. Guided by a voice, and told never to look within the
box, she was able to find it. But curiosity overcame her on
the way back, she looked within, and became unconscious.
But the story had a happy ending; Cupid forgave her, Jupiter
agreed to allow the marriage, and Psyche became a goddess.
Even Venus was reconciled to her; probably because Psyche,
no longer among the mortals, ceased to be her competition.
The Myth According to Lewis
Lewis regarded Apuleius as the transmitter of the story, not its
creator, and so he felt ‘‘quite free to go behind Apuleius’’
Walking by Faith 109
(TWHF: 313) and change some of the plot to add details or
bring out more clearly aspects of the myth that could support a
Christian perspective. The expanded myth became the novel
Till We Have Faces, and Lewis tells the story from the perspective of Orual, the very homely, oldest daughter of a king who
is both cruel and cowardly. Orual has two sisters, Redival and
Psyche, the youngest.
The story unfolds in a pagan kingdom where the native
religion is the worship of Ungit, represented by a ‘‘black
stone without head or hands or a face,’’ and believed to be
‘‘a very strong goddess’’ (TWHF: 4). Ungit often requires blood
sacrifices and to Orual, her religion seems dark, mysterious,
and demanding. Even though the king often consults the
priest who represents Ungit, tragedies still come to the palace.
After his first wife died, his second wife also died within a year
of their marriage, after giving birth to Psyche. The king is
furious with the priest, but fears the revenge of Ungit, and so
he vents his fury upon his family.
Later, when things have calmed down, the king sends to
Greece, a near-by kingdom, and hires a tutor for his three
daughters. (Perhaps Lewis was thinking of Philip, king of
Macedonia, who hired Aristotle from neighboring Greece to
teach his son Alexander the Great.) They call him the Fox, and
come to love and respect him. But when prolonged drought
plagues the kingdom, Orual’s father consults the priest of
Ungit who tells him that rain will return if one of his daughters
is sacrificed to the monster who lives up in the mountains. The
cowardly king, relieved that his life was not required, agrees to
sacrifice Psyche, the purest and most beautiful of his three
daughters, to save the kingdom.
The horrible deed is carried out and Psyche disappears, eaten
by the monster, or so it is believed. But in reality, invisible
beings bring her to a marvelous palace, where she becomes the
bride of Cupid. Her every wish is granted, and she lacks for
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Walking by Faith
nothing in that beautiful place. But there is one condition to
the marriage: she must not see the face of the god. Meanwhile,
Orual decides to slip away to the place where Psyche had been
sacrificed to discover if there are any remains of her. Accompanied by Bardia, one of the palace soldiers, they reach the
dreaded place, only to find no trace of Psyche whatsoever.
Thinking she might have been dragged away, they widen the
search until they finally come to a river. There, on the other
side, tanned and healthy, stands Psyche.
Soon Orual learns that Psyche did not die, but rather Zephyrus, the god of the West-wind, freed her from her chains and
carried her away to a palace. After hearing her story, Orual,
wanting to believe but not yet able, asks if she can see the
palace. Psyche is stunned, for they are standing on the stairs of
the great gate of the palace. How can she not see the palace?
Orual wonders if Psyche is mad, and yet even her eyes tell
her Psyche has encountered the divine. ‘‘From the top of her
head to her naked feet she was bathed in life and beauty and
well-being. It was as if they flowed over her or from her’’
(TWHF: 123).
Later that night, unable to sleep, Orual returns to the river’s
edge, and for a brief moment, sees the palace. ‘‘As she [Psyche]
had said, it was like no house ever seen in our land or age.
Pinnacles and buttresses leaped up – no memories of mine,
you would think, could help me to imagine them – unbelievably tall and slender, pointed and prickly as if stone were
shooting out into branch and flower’’ (TWHF: 132).
What a predicament Orual finds herself in; what should she
believe? Her beloved sister has not been eaten by a monster
and seems more alive than ever. But is she sane, claiming to be
the wife of a god? To make matters worse, she herself has seen
the palace, if only for a moment, but can she trust her eyes?
Orual does what most of us would do; she asks the significant
people around her. First, she consults Bardia, who has been
Walking by Faith 111
her protector on the journey. His cautious answer represents
many whose idea of religion is to not give God any problems.
‘‘It’s not my way to say more than I can help of gods and
divine matters . . . I think the less Bardia meddles with the
gods, the less they’ll meddle with Bardia’’ (TWHF: 135). Pushing him for more help, Orual asks what he thinks about a god
who forbids his bride to see his face. Reflecting for a time,
Bardia finally concludes that the reason is that Psyche would
be repelled by what she saw. In sum, Bardia appears to be a
‘‘solid,’’ dependable person on the surface, but his ‘‘religion’’ is
based upon fear and distrust. The less contact with the gods,
the better.
The two travelers return to the palace, and soon the Fox, the
tutor of the three sisters, comes to learn of any news they
might have. Orual recounts her experiences, but does not tell
him that she saw Psyche’s palace. The Fox rejoices at hearing
Psyche is still alive, but soon his face becomes sad and concerned when Orual tells him that Psyche believes she is married to a god and living in a splendid palace. The tutor is no
Platonist, for he believes that only what the senses can perceive is real. If Psyche is healthy, someone must be feeding
her. Since that someone could not be an invisible god, then it
must be some mountain man who comes to her in the dark.
And since Psyche believes him, the experience of being
exposed on the mountain as prey for some monster must
have driven her mad. It’s all very neatly reasoned out, but
far from the truth! Reason will never have eyes to see Psyche’s
palace.
Now Orual has heard from the two wisest persons she
knows, and both explanations seem true to her. But they do
agree on one thing: something terrible has happened to Psyche, and Orual resolves to act. She must rescue Psyche from
this person or monster who refuses to show his face, and if
Psyche is out of her mind, Orual is willing to use force. But
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Walking by Faith
before she can return to Psyche, she remembers what she saw
and a part of her mind says to her:
Do not meddle. Anything might be true. You are among marvels that you do not understand. Carefully, carefully. Who
knows what ruin you might pull down on her head and
yours? But with the other part of me I answered that I was
indeed her mother and her father, too (all she had of either),
that my love must be grave and provident, not slip-shod and
indulgent, that there is a time for love to be stern. (TWHF: 152)
Orual’s refusal to believe in the spirit world or in the goodness
of the gods, combined with her possessive and controlling
‘‘love’’ of others, leads her to the conviction that ‘‘tough
love’’ is what the situation calls for. When she meets Psyche
once again, she tries to convince her that her husband is either
a monster or perhaps a criminal; after all, both Bardia and the
Fox agree. Now the contrast of faith and sight becomes clear as
they converse. For Orual, anyone who forbids his wife to see
his face has something sinister to hide. For Psyche, the ways of
the gods are above us and we must trust that they have good
reasons for their prohibitions. Without realizing, Orual has
taken the position of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, who
told Eve that God didn’t want her to eat of a certain tree
because he didn’t want anyone else to be as wise as him.
In other words, God can’t be trusted, and disobedience will
prove it.
And so Orual tells Psyche the only way to prove she is
married to a god is to look upon his face. When Psyche refuses,
Orual takes out her dagger and pushes the point completely
through her arm to demonstrate her resolve. If Psyche refuses,
she will kill her and then end her own life as well. Out of love
for Orual, Psyche agrees to look upon the face of Cupid. Soon
there is a tremendous cry, thunder and lightning, the palace
collapses, the god appears and rebukes Orual, and the sobs of
Walking by Faith 113
Psyche are heard in the distance. Now she must wander over
the face of the earth as an outcast, and spend her life attempting to complete the tasks Venus imposes upon her.
Orual returns home, still unwilling to accept the glimpse of
the palace across the river and what she has heard from Cupid
himself. Psyche is dead to her now. She enters Psyche’s room
and puts everything as it had been before tragedy struck. She
finds what appears to be a hymn to the god of the mountain
and destroys it. That part of Psyche she will not accept. Her
jewels and clothes from childhood Orual does keep, neatly
arranged in their proper places. Then she shuts the door to
Psyche’s room, and locks and seals it.
Orual also rearranges her inner life. She turns to the study of
natural sciences because ‘‘I wanted hard things now, and to
pile up knowledge . . . My aim was to build up more and more
that strength, hard and joyless, which had come to me when I
heard the god’s sentence . . . to drive all the woman out of me’’
(TWHF: 184). She succeeds in this, and after her father’s
death, becomes queen and rules the kingdom well.
The third change Orual makes, and perhaps the most significant symbol of her post-Psyche life, is her veil. She first
wore it during her two trips to the mountain so she could
remain secret, but then decided to make it a permanent part
of her attire. In time, people forgot her ugly appearance and
imagination took over. Some thought the veil must cover a
face too hideous to behold, others, no face at all. Still others
supposed men would go mad if they saw her beauty, but in the
end, she was a mysterious and fearful person to all, which
added to her authority.
Many years pass and as Orual nears the end of her life, and
with her kingdom of Glome in peace, she decides to visit other
lands. During her journey she comes to a small temple and
within she finds a statue of a woman with a black veil over her
face. (Her own veil is white.) She asks the priest of the temple
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Walking by Faith
about this strange goddess, and he begins to tell the story of
how a mortal woman recently became divine. Orual is
shocked by what she hears, for it is her own story.
But the priest tells her story badly, saying that the sisters of
Psyche were able to see Cupid’s palace. Orual is outraged: a
story like that belongs to another world, where the gods do
show themselves to mortals and do not ask men to believe
what contradicts what our senses report. In such a world Orual
would have been faultless! Challenging the priest’s version of
the myth, she asks why the sisters would have ruined Psyche’s
happiness if they were able to see where she lived. Because
they were jealous, the priest replies. Orual refuses to see jealousy in herself and leaves the temple in anger. But she is
unable to forget the story and now has even more accusations
to bring before the gods.
Not long after returning home, old and tired, her father
suddenly appears to her, bossy as ever, and commands her to
get up. They go to the Pillar Room and he commands her
to dig. They both dig and presently break through the floor,
only to find another room beneath it. They jump down into
the room, smaller and warmer than the room above, and once
again she is told to dig. Now the dirt is hard clay, but they
finally manage to dig through the floor, only to find yet
another, still smaller room. Once down there, the room starts
to shrink and Orual fears being suffocated, but the king ignores
the danger and brings her to a mirror on the wall. ‘‘Who is
Ungit?’’ he asks. No longer veiled, Orual looks . . . and sees not
her face but that of Ungit. ‘‘Without question it was true. It
was I who was Ungit. That ruinous face was mine. I was . . .
that all-devouring womblike, yet barren, thing. Glome was a
web – I the swollen spider, squat at its center, gorged with
men’s stolen lives’’ (TWHF: 276).
Pondering what this might mean, Orual resolves that she
will not be Ungit. She will practice true philosophy, as Socrates
Walking by Faith 115
taught, and so transform her soul into a thing of beauty
(TWHF: 282). But every effort is unsuccessful; why won’t
the gods help her? Soon in her dreams she finds herself trying
to accomplish some of the tasks given to Psyche, only to fail.
Lying in a desert, unable to rise, a divine eagle approaches and
asks about the roll in her hands. It is her book, and she tells the
bird that it contains her complaints against the gods. Instantly,
she is brought before them, and finally has the chance to be
heard. Out pours all the pent-up hatred and spite:
You know well that I never really began to hate you until
Psyche began talking of her palace and her lover and her
husband . . . the girl was mine. What right had you to steal
her away into your dreadful heights . . . there’s no room for
you and us in the same world. You’re a tree in whose shadow
we can’t thrive. We want to be our own. I was my own
and Psyche was mine and no one else had any right to
her . . . ‘‘Enough,’’ said the judge . . . ‘‘Are you answered?’’ he
said. ‘‘Yes,’’ said I. (TWHF: 290–3)
More self-discovery comes when Orual in a vision sees the
Fox. He guides her to a place filled with beautiful pictures, and
as they gaze at the picture of woman coming to a river bank, it
comes to life. Soon Orual recognizes the woman; she is Psyche
and each picture shows them her life after she left Cupid’s
palace. After Psyche completes each task, finally returning
from the underworld with the beauty of Persephone in a
box, they discuss her life of suffering.
‘‘Did we really do these things to her?’’ I asked.
‘‘Yes. All here’s true.’’
‘‘And we said we loved her.’’
‘‘And we did. She had no more dangerous enemies than us.
And in that far distant day when the gods become wholly
beautiful, or we at last are shown how beautiful they always
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Walking by Faith
were, this will happen more and more. For mortals, as you said,
will become more and more jealous. And mother and wife and
child and friend will all be in league to keep a soul from being
united with the Divine Nature.’’ (TWHF: 304)
The Fox then leads Orual outside, where she finally meets
Psyche. Falling at her feet, Orual says: ‘‘Never again will I call
you mine; but all there is of me shall be yours’’ (TWHF: 305).
As they are reconciled to each other, Orual senses the
approach of the divine. The old Orual is unmade, and then
transformed by the arrows of the god. Looking down into the
pool at their feet she sees two people, both beautiful, reflected
in the water. A great voice proclaims: ‘‘You also are Psyche’’
(TWHF: 308). Orual’s death follows four days later.
The Meaning of the Myth
Why did Lewis choose this myth? As a Christian and even
before his conversion he was attracted to the stories of gods
who died, came to life again, and somehow helped the world.
The myth of Cupid and Psyche does not tell such a story, yet it
held his fascination for decades and is the only myth he made
into a novel, and did so, the biographers tell us, with much
assistance from his wife, Joy.
Natural affection
One reason Lewis liked this story is that he found it to be an
ideal vehicle for what he wanted to say about human affection. The two sisters were so jealous of Psyche that they were
willing to spoil her happiness. As Lewis shapes the story, only
one sister embodies this spite, since the story is told through
the voice of Orual, but the message is the same. Orual serves as
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an example of natural affection, one of the loves Lewis
described so well in The Four Loves. When Orual and Psyche
were together, their affection for each other was tender
and strong. But when the gods took Psyche, that same affection, because it was only natural and therefore lacked divine
support, became possessive.
What such love particularly cannot stand is to see the beloved
passing into a sphere where it cannot follow . . . Someone
becomes a Christian, or, in a family nominally Christian
already, does something like becoming a missionary or entering
a religious order. The others suffer a sense of outrage. What
they love is being taken from them! The boy must be mad! And
the conceit of him! Or is there something in it after all? Let’s
hope it is only a phase! (‘‘Letter to Clyde S. Kilby’’ in L: 462–3,
February 10, 1957)
Lewis returned to this theme (which shows its importance
to him) in the ‘‘Affection’’ chapter of The Four Loves. Affection
dislikes change. ‘‘Few things in the ordinary peacetime life of a
civilized country are more nearly fiendish than the rancour
with which a whole unbelieving family will turn on the one
member of it who has become a Christian . . . ‘‘He who was one
of Us has become one of Them. What right had anybody to do
it? He is ours’’ (FL: 46–7).
Lewis’s insights into the reaction of natural affection when
the family circle (one type of ‘‘inner ring’’) is broken also
explain why Jesus said his own message would be so divisive:
‘‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth;
I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come
to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her
mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household’’
(Matthew 10:34–36).
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Walking by Faith
The importance of faith
But why do families react so strongly when one of them
changes? Yes, affection dislikes change and there may be
jealously involved. But underneath it all is the fact of a new
reality that the others are not able to see. At the end of Till We
Have Faces Lewis tells us that even when he read the story for
the first time, he realized something was wrong. The older
sisters should not have been able to see the palace Cupid
made for Psyche. So Lewis made it invisible (though he gave
Orual a glimpse of it) and regarded this change as the ‘‘central
alteration in my own version’’ (TWHF: 313).
With this change, the story becomes more consistent with
the other parts of the story that serve the Christian message so
well. Towering over everything is the theme that surely
caught and held the attention of even the pre-Christian
Lewis: the destiny of Psyche (the Greek word for soul) is to
be married to a god. And once Lewis became a believer, how
could he not return to the story and make the necessary
corrections so that it could more accurately reflect its divine
source?
But such a marriage, described as the marriage supper of the
Lamb in the Bible, is possible only on one condition: Psyche,
that is, the soul, must not see the face of God. Faith, not logic
based on the evidence our senses report to us, makes this
union possible, for ‘‘without faith it is impossible to please
God’’ (Heb 11:6). Lewis brought the Fox into the story to
represent the logic made so famous by Greek philosophy,
and sure enough, when Orual consults him after seeing Psyche, he turns her away from what the soul understood. And
so she turns to ‘‘masculine’’ pursuits that will give her the
empirical evidence the mind demands.
Orual not only turned away from faith, her possessive affection brought about the ‘‘fall’’ of Psyche when she forced her to
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view the face of Cupid. As Eve was driven from the Garden of
Eden, Psyche may no longer enjoy the luxuries of the palace
and the presence of her lover. Now the gods set seemingly
impossible tasks for her as she wanders the earth, and our first
parents likewise find that their disobedience results in a much
harder existence.
Yet even after disaster, the gods help Psyche, and we have
not been abandoned either. The promise of reunion remains;
Cupid is still smitten by the beauty of the soul. And Jesus still
intends to return for his bride, the church, even though she
has ‘‘no beauty but what the Bride-groom gives her; he does
not find, but makes her, lovely’’ (FL: 105).
But first, the veil must come off. Orual kept insisting that
God show himself, but only when she unveiled herself to God
did she find the answers she was seeking, and discover that
she, not God, had been the problem all along. In The Great
Divorce, Spirits came down from the mountains of Heaven to
help the Ghosts become more solid. Lewis uses the same
technique in Faces when he brings help to Orual in the person
of her deceased father. He makes her finally remove the veil,
and they begin to dig down into her self, past the superego,
down into the ego, and deeper still until they finally reach the
id, that ugly troll that lives under the bridge between the heart
and the mind. The sight of her possessive self is a crucial step in
her becoming what God wants her to be: another Psyche, and
beautiful at last.
Reconciling faith and sight
Lewis hasn’t given up on the mind. It too comes from God. But
the mind weighs what the senses report to it, and God is
(usually) not perceived by the senses. When the soul reports
what the senses cannot, the mind must be humble enough to
admit that the divine is beyond its scope. And when the mind
120 Walking by Faith
accepts what it cannot verify by reason, that person has taken
a ‘‘step of faith.’’ Then something interesting happens. After
conversion, new insights begin to flood into the mind and
Christianity starts making sense. Now the mind does have a
legitimate role to play. For Lewis, the faith was like the sun
rising; not that he was looking at the sun, but that by it he
could see, that is, begin to really understand for the first time
the world around him.
In the story, Orual was caught between the ‘‘dark’’ or
‘‘thick’’ religion of Ungit who demanded mysterious blood
sacrifices, and the ‘‘clear’’ or ‘‘thin’’ philosophy of the Fox
who reduced the divine to logic. ‘‘I was the child of Glome
and the pupil of the Fox; I saw that for years my life had been
lived in two halves, never fitted together’’ (TWHF: 151). By
choosing the latter and denying what her soul reported about
the palace of Cupid, she separated herself from the divine.
Lewis divided religions into either of these two categories,
and believed that a true religion must contain both. Since
Cupid’s castle was a divine construction, Lewis needed to
change the myth and make it invisible to the senses. In this
way he made the story more Christian, the only religion that
successfully combines both thick and thin in the lives of
believers.
The true God must have made both the child and the man, both
the savage and the citizen, both the head and the belly. Christianity . . . takes a convert from central Africa and tells him to obey
an enlightened universalistic ethic: it takes a twentieth-century
academic prig like me and tells me to go fasting to a Mystery, to
drink the blood of the Lord. The savage convert has to be Clear:
I have to be Thick. That is how one knows one has come to the
real religion. (‘‘Christian Apologetics’’ in GID: 102–3)
It must not have been easy for Lewis – who possessed such a
powerful intellect – to admit that faith is a better way than
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sight to approach the divine. The danger he warned against is
assuming the mind that helped Orual become a capable ruler
should also guide her in understanding God and what he is
doing. When change came to Orual’s life, her jealousy overcame any trust in the divine. Moreover, she thought only of
herself instead of the happiness of Psyche, who was glad to go
to the Mountain, the place of beauty she had longed for all her
life (Lewis used the German word Sehnsucht to refer to this
deep-seated, inner longing for joy that he first experienced
as a child). The gods were there, she was going to her lover
(TWHF: 75). This, then, is the message from the Divine to preChristian pagans that Lewis saw in the myth of Cupid and
Psyche. God isn’t a fearful ogre ready to send plagues upon
us if we don’t sacrifice our children to him. He plans to make
us beautiful, body and soul, and unite us to himself.
Chapter 6
God’s Plan for the Soul
‘‘The food is terrible!’’
Illustration ß 2007 by Deborah Wilson Camp
God’s Plan for the Soul 123
‘‘Aslan,’’ said Lucy through her tears, ‘‘could you – will you –
do something for these Dwarfs?’’ ‘‘Dearest,’’ said Aslan, ‘‘I will
show you both what I can and what I cannot do.’’ Then Aslan
growled, but the Dwarfs heard only a strange sound at the other
end of the Stable. Then Aslan shook his mane and a glorious
feast appeared. The Dwarfs began eating, but it seemed to them
that they were eating only hay, raw cabbage, turnips, and
drinking dirty water.
‘‘You see,’’ said Aslan. ‘‘They will not let us help them. They
have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is in their
own minds, yet they are in that prison, and so afraid of being
taken in that they cannot be taken out.’’
(LB: 146–8)
Well, I can sympathize with the Dwarfs because I don’t like to
be deceived either, and they were certainly led astray by Tash,
a type of Satan in The Last Battle. But did that unfortunate
experience have to end so badly? Of course not. None of us is
perfect, and so we all make errors in thought (and deed!) –
even the brightest of us. Sometimes what we say can influence
others to believe something we thought was true, but wasn’t.
But we mustn’t let such experiences make us cynical because
the only way to learn and grow is to think about new ideas,
and that means taking a risk. We might be fooled again. But
the important thing is to want to know the truth. Sooner or
later, Lewis (and the Bible) tells us, those who seek will surely
find. The Dwarves stopped believing in anything but themselves. Finally, not even Aslan could reach them.
But is playing safe a sin? Is cynicism wrong if it guards a
person from being deceived? Lewis answers this question in
The Great Divorce when he meets (in his dream) a tall, lean,
hardbitten Ghost on the outskirts of Heaven. He strikes Lewis
as the reliable sort, and so they begin conversing. The Ghost
tells Lewis he has been just about everywhere, and all of the
124 God’s Plan for the Soul
scenic places on earth are just advertising stunts run by
the same people. Even in Heaven and Hell the same consortium seems to be in charge. Hell is just like any other town;
no fire, devils, or interesting people sizzling on grids, the
Ghost complains, and Heaven itself is ‘‘darned uncomfortable’’
(GD: 55). When Lewis suggests that Heaven might become
more suitable if they stayed and let Heaven change them,
the hardbitten Ghost finds this suggestion ridiculous.
All this poppycock about growing harder so that the grass
doesn’t hurt your feet, now! There’s an example. What would
you say if you went to a hotel where the eggs were all bad; and
when you complained to the Boss, instead of apologizing
and changing his dairyman, he just told you that if you tried
you’d get to like bad eggs in time? (GD: 56)
The cynical Ghost was correct; the outskirts of Heaven as
Lewis imagined them were very unpleasant to the souls that
arrived there. A single apple was too heavy to lift, and even the
grass was sharp as knives and as hard as diamonds. Lewis
wanted the landscape to convey his conviction that Heaven
is reality itself, and reality can’t change just to suit people who
have their own ideas about what Heaven should be like.
The Goal of Sanctification
Lewis is quite definite about God’s plan for the human race –
nothing less than perfection. But how and when will he
accomplish this? And what about the theological corner I
mentioned in chapter three into which Lewis has painted
himself? Here’s how he got there. First, only Jesus was God
in the flesh (the incarnation). Next, Jesus is the only human
who lived a sinless life and so he is the only one who could
offer himself as the perfect and final sacrifice for the sins of
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125
the world. Finally, only by Jesus dwelling within can believers
have God’s life in themselves. If Jesus is the only way to God’s
forgiveness and everlasting life, as Christianity has always
claimed (it’s not really Lewis’s corner, after all), what will
become of all those who never heard the good news? Lewis
sets forth the solution in The Great Divorce.
Lewis often thought and wrote about the ultimate destiny of
mankind. In his daily readings of the Bible, he encountered
many passages about the final judgment. How could the sinful,
imperfect, often deceived human race stand before the God
whose holiness made him a ‘‘consuming fire’’ to sinners (Heb
12:29)? There was only one possible answer: perfection of the
soul through Christ. Yes, there is forgiveness in Christ (justification), but the old nature still tries to have its way, often
aided by the attempts of the enemy that Lewis wrote about
in The Screwtape Letters. Justification is the doctrine that the
righteousness of Christ is imputed or given by God to those
who believe Christ died for their sins, and sanctification is the
process by which God actually brings us in thought, word, and
deed to the attainment of that righteousness.
In the 1984 movie The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger
plays a cyborg sent from the future to kill Sarah Connor because
she will have a son that will help humans in the future defeat
the machines that are taking over the world. Then Kyle Reese
also arrives from the future to protect Sarah. Naturally, she
doesn’t understand what is happening at first, and tries to
return to normal life after Kyle has helped her escape from the
cyborg. ‘‘You don’t understand,’’ he tells her. ‘‘It’s not human.
It doesn’t sleep, it won’t stop, it will keep tracking you down
until you are dead! That’s what it does – it’s a terminator!’’
And that is exactly how Lewis views sanctification. God is
holy, and he will track down every sin and terminate it. That’s
what he does. God says to each believer: ‘‘If you let me, I will
make you perfect . . . whatever suffering it may cost you in
126 God’s Plan for the Soul
your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may
cost you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor
let you rest, until you are literally perfect’’ (MC: 158). Lewis
shows here that he believed purification, that is, the process of
sanctification, continued ‘‘after death.’’ What did he mean?
Whereas some believers in the Protestant tradition teach
that it is possible to be completely sanctified before death,
Lewis did not hold this position, and the experience of most
Christians supports his view. He concluded ‘‘the job will not be
completed in this life; but He means to get us as far as possible
before death’’ (MC: 159). The implications are clear: if all sin
has not been removed before death, and God won’t be satisfied
until all sin has been cleansed, then the process must continue
after we die. In other words, Lewis believed in Purgatory.
The Concept of Purgatory
The concept of Purgatory has been around for a very long time
and for good reason: it explains when and how the process of
sanctification continues after death. Over the centuries Purgatory acquired some negative connotations due to such abuses
as the selling of indulgences, but these do not affect the theological importance of Purgatory. Lewis himself did not agree
with the full Catholic understanding of Purgatory, but he did
agree that the most important thing about Purgatory is not
some place in the spirit world but the purification of the soul.
In sum, Lewis’s conception of Purgatory is (keeping things
simple) the completion or at least the continuation of the
sanctification of the believer, and for most people, the process
is not complete during this life. There are really only three
possibilities: perfection through sanctification during our
earthly life, at the time of physical death, or after death. This
last option calls for caution; Scripture is not clear if perfection
God’s Plan for the Soul 127
is reached during the intermediate state, or after the resurrection of the body when we stand before Christ. Perhaps both
settings will have a part to play in the process of sanctification.
Only one option remains for most Protestants in regard to
sanctification, since they agree with Lewis that perfection is
unlikely in this life, and since they wish to avoid the Catholic
doctrine of Purgatory. Physical death is the point of no return as
far as salvation and spiritual progress is concerned. ‘‘The tree lies
as it falls’’ is the metaphor Lewis uses to describe the Protestant
position (GD: 69). And yet, can this view hold up to a closer look?
The strength of this position is that the emphasis is upon
God as sanctifier, and its weakness is that it removes our
participation. Some would argue that believers struggle with
sin during their lives, they have prayed to have it removed,
and now that life is over, God answers their prayers and
cleanses the soul. But I think Lewis would respond by pointing
out that when we accepted Christ and gave him permission to
remove our sins in this world, before physical death, sanctification was neither immediate nor automatic.
The fault is not God’s. Humans have a tendency to hang on to
those sins that ‘‘so easily beset us,’’ even after a profession of
faith. Indeed, we are often not even aware of our sins until God
reveals them to us. When he does reveal them to us, we may be
unwilling to surrender them; to pay the price of their removal.
Even when we are willing, he usually asks us to struggle with
them (no doubt to grow in strength and also in reliance on
him), instead of immediately removing them. Sanctification,
then, requires our cooperation and participation, and so Lewis
rejects the ‘‘at death’’ option. Reflecting on the loss of his wife,
he wrote: ‘‘How do I know that all her anguish is past? I never
believed before – I thought it immensely improbable – that the
faithfulest soul could leap straight into perfection and peace the
moment death has rattled in the throat’’ (GO: 35). The only
option left is Purgatory.
128 God’s Plan for the Soul
A central aspect of Purgatory is that pain will be an integral
part of the soul’s experience there. Lewis accepts pain as part
of sanctification, both before and after death, but the results
make the pain worthwhile.
I assume that the process of purification will normally involve
suffering. Partly from tradition; partly because most real good
that has been done me in this life has involved it. But I don’t
think suffering is the purpose of the purgation. I can well
believe that people neither much worse nor much better than
I will suffer less than I or more. ‘‘No nonsense about merit.’’
The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts
little or much.
My favourite image on this matter comes from the dentist’s
chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am
‘‘coming round,’’ a voice will say, ‘‘Rinse your mouth out with
this.’’ This will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer than I
can now imagine. The taste of this may be more fiery and
astringent than my present sensibility could endure. But More
and Fisher [Catholic theologians who depicted Purgatory as a
place of severe torment by devils] shall not persuade me that it
will be disgusting and unhallowed. (LTM: 109)
But if the process is the crucial matter, the place of Purgatory
is still important since it is part of the spirit world. In the
Scriptures, Heaven is ‘‘up’’ and Hades is ‘‘down,’’ but both
are actually ‘‘places’’ in the same spirit world. Many of Lewis’s
ideas of the spirit world came from our physical world because
he viewed this world and this life as ‘‘Shadow Lands,’’ and the
invisible spirit world as the eternal reality of which this existence is only a faint but real reflection.
‘‘The Eagle is right,’’ said the Lord Digory. ‘‘Listen, Peter. When
Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the
Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia.
It had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or copy of
God’s Plan for the Soul 129
the real Narnia, which has always been here and always will be
here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow
or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. (LB: 169)
Plato and Scripture agree that our present world is only a
reflection of more substantial realities we do not now see. Paul
mentioned the ‘‘true Narnia’’ in 2 Corinthians 4:17–18, a text
Lewis knew well since he took his famous sermon ‘‘The
Weight of Glory’’ from this passage. ‘‘For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory
beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be
seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is
temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.’’
So then Narnia is an imaginary version of the real and
eternal Narnia, just as our world is of Heaven, or the spirit
world. (I’m using the expression ‘‘spirit world’’ to contrast
with the physical or material world in which we live. ‘‘Spirit’’
reminds us that this is where spirits like angels and God exist,
and the spirit world includes all ‘‘places,’’ such as Hades
depicted in the Bible as ‘‘below’’ and Heaven ‘‘above.’’) And
Lewis thought and wrote much about the spirit world because
he knew that was the destiny of every human being and
because the redemptive work of Jesus did not end on the
cross but also continued in the spirit world and greatly
changed things there.
The Descent of Christ in The Great Divorce
Let me explain. As an Anglican, Lewis would have been quite
familiar with the Apostle’s Creed, which includes the words
‘‘He [Jesus] descended into Hell.’’ In church tradition, the
descent of Christ and his releasing of captive humans so that
they could ascend with him into Paradise came to be known as
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God’s Plan for the Soul
the ‘‘winnowing of Hell,’’ though it is more accurate to refer to
this part of the underworld as Hades (the Old Testament word
is sheol) – an intermediate state between death and resurrection where change is still possible – than Hell, the final state of
those who reject God. The importance of this part of Christ’s
redemption to Lewis is shown in that he included it prominently when he retold the gospel story. We’ve already seen the
descent in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when Aslan and
the girls flew to the Witch’s castle; and in Perelandra, when
Ransom finally was able to end his struggle with the Unman
by crushing his head with a rock and pushing his body over
the edge of a cliff and down into a lake of fire. Now, in The
Great Divorce, an imaginary trip to the spirit world after Christ
has been there, Lewis gives his most developed treatment of
Purgatory in his fictional works.
In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis emphasized the
freeing of the stone captives held prisoner in the Hades of the
Witch’s castle, while in Perelandra, the struggle with Satan is
the focus. But Lewis isn’t finished. Inspired by the great poetry
of Dante’s Comedia (in English, Divine Comedy), which described a visit to Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, Lewis makes
the same trip, but this time on a bus! Just as Dante had his
hero, Virgil (who also described a journey to the underworld),
to serve as his ‘‘tour guide,’’ so Lewis gives this honor to
George MacDonald, the Scottish minister to whom Lewis
owed so much, even saying that MacDonald’s book Phantastes
had ‘‘baptized’’ his imagination.
In The Great Divorce, Lewis dreams that he finds himself
walking for hours in a run-down section of town. Rain is
falling, and time seems frozen in twilight. The town seems
empty until he finally comes to a bus stop where people are
lined up. Quarrels break out as they wait, everyone shoves and
pushes to get on when the bus arrives, and yet there seems to
be room for all. As they leave the ground and travel across a
God’s Plan for the Soul 131
huge abyss, Lewis speaks with various people on the bus; each
of them seems to be nursing a grudge of some kind against
someone else or God himself.
The bus ride ends in a beautiful, pastoral setting that gives
the impression of enormous size. Once again, time seems to
have stopped, but up here morning is just about to dawn.
Everyone piles out of the bus with more pushing and shouting, leaving Lewis to exit last. He begins to enjoy the beauty
around him, but finds everything immensely hard and solid.
Even the blades of grass are as sharp and as hard as diamonds.
Soon he notices spirits approaching in the distance, and as
they draw closer, Lewis can see they are as solid and heavy as
the landscape. They have been changed and now belong to this
place. Each of them seems to know one of the passengers that
arrived on the bus, and they begin to speak with them, attempting to persuade them to confront the sins in their life, allow God
to remove them, and then accompany them on the journey
into Heaven. The bus has delivered them to the outskirts of
Heaven, but now they need to go higher up and farther in.
The Theology of Purgatory in Seven Principles
Lewis has really unleashed his imagination, but the focus is
obviously upon the end of the process of sanctification. Those
who wish can always take the bus from the Grey Town to the
outskirts of Heaven. Those who stay there will look back and
say it was Purgatory, while to those who refuse Heaven, it will
have been Hell. Since this is Lewis’s most extensive and complex depiction of Purgatory, a closer look at the seven principles upon which The Great Divorce rests should clarify his
theology of sanctification after death.
First principle: the soul does not ‘‘sleep’’ after physical death.
Some Christians have taught that we become unconscious at
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death and do not regain consciousness until Christ returns.
Lewis disagrees, and depicts each Ghost and Spirit in The Great
Divorce as fully human in personality. Is he correct? Scripture
reveals very little about human existence after physical death,
but such passages as the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus
(Luke 16:19–31) and the souls of the martyrs under the altar
(Rev 6:9–11) describe deceased humans as still having the
essential qualities of the soul: consciousness, intellect, will,
and emotions. Moral change is still possible; otherwise Purgatory serves no purpose. This does not imply that deceased
humans are now complete, since they have been freed from
their sinful bodies. God’s redemptive plans for us include the
resurrection of our physical bodies, and only then will we be
complete and fully human.
Second principle: who and what we are is the result of all of
our moral choices. Sanctification is impossible without the
grace of God, but we also play a part. We can choose; indeed,
we make many moral choices during our lives. ‘‘Every time
you make a choice you are turning the central part of
you . . . either into a Heavenly creature or into a Hellish creature’’ (MC: 72). The grumbling Ghost we meet in The Great
Divorce is in danger of becoming only a grumble, explains
MacDonald (GD: 74). This principle is an important antidote
to the theology that stresses only the new birth of a believer to
the neglect of spiritual development afterwards.
Third principle: God will not sanctify us unless we allow him
to do so. The strongest example of this in The Great Divorce is
the Angel who tells the man with the red lizard (it represents
lust) on his shoulder: ‘‘I cannot kill it against your will. It
is impossible. Have I your permission?’’ (GD: 99). Through
his Spirit God convicts us of sin and through his grace he
helps us conquer sin, but only if we acknowledge the sin he
shows us and accept the grace he offers. I hasten to add that
this principle does not imply believers can be passive in the
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133
process of sanctification; the second principle requires our
involvement. Paul also reminds us that we have an active
part to play: ‘‘Since we have these promises . . . let us purify
ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit,
perfecting holiness out of reverence for God’’ (2 Cor 7:1).
Lewis is quite aware that the credit for our spiritual progress
must ultimately go to God. ‘‘I have been talking as if it were we
who did everything. In reality, of course, it is God who does
everything. We, at most, allow it to be done to us’’ (MC: 150).
If we resist, God can convict us, woo us, reprimand us, and
even punish us, but ultimately, as Lewis puts it, we finally
yield to God and say, ‘‘Thy will be done,’’ or we rebel until God
finally says to us, ‘‘Thy will be done’’ (GD: 72).
Fourth principle: no sin can enter Heaven. Not even, insists
Lewis, ‘‘the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell’’ (GD:
10). Of course, sins don’t have an independent existence; what
this really means is that no person, whether pagan or Christian,
can enjoy (endure?) eternal fellowship with God until every
sin has been removed. God is utterly and completely holy, and
only those who have put on the righteousness of Christ can
have fellowship with him.
Fifth principle: ‘‘seek and you shall find.’’ These familiar
words come from the Sermon on the Mount and Lewis quoted
them through MacDonald: ‘‘Those who seek find. To those
who knock it is opened’’ (GD: 72). The complete text is: ‘‘Ask
and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the
door shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives,
and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who
knocks the door will be opened’’ (Matthew 7:7–8). Lewis did
not cheapen these words by viewing them as promises for
wealth or perfect health, but as God’s promise that anyone
who sincerely desires God will find him. This principle pervades each dialogue in The Great Divorce, as the Spirits do
everything in their power to persuade the Ghosts to relinquish
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their sins and embrace God’s forgiveness. As MacDonald tells
Lewis: ‘‘If there’s one wee spark under all those ashes, we’ll
blow it till the whole pile is red and clear’’ (GD: 74).
Sixth principle: Lewis believed that ‘‘places’’ in the spirit
world like Paradise and Hades were ‘‘timeless,’’ or at least
very different from the space-time continuum in which we
experience life on the surface of our planet. This principle
(perhaps I should say hypothesis) of Lewis explains why The
Great Divorce contains expressions like ‘‘There is no other day.
All days are present now’’ (GD: 98), ‘‘This moment contains all
moments’’ (GD: 98), and ‘‘All moments that have been or
shall be were, or are, present in the moment of His descending’’ (GD: 121).
Seventh principle: Jesus is the only way. In Mere Christianity
Lewis identified Jesus as God incarnate, the sinless sacrifice for
the sins of the world, and the one who gives divine life to us.
Now Lewis adds in The Great Divorce that he is the only one
who descended into the underworld (between his death and
resurrection) to finish our sanctification.
The Descent of Christ in Scripture
Before I go any farther, I think I should give the scriptural basis
for Christ’s descent into the underworld. Many believers today
have seldom if ever heard sermons or Sunday school lessons
on this part of the redemptive work of Christ. In fact, some
evangelical scholars began to attack this belief during the last
half of the twentieth century for reasons that are still not clear
to me. Therefore, I shall briefly explain why Christ descended,
what happened when he did, and give the scriptural support
for this interesting tenet of the faith.
To begin with, Jesus himself often spoke of returning to his
Father in Heaven. And he also promised to make a change in
God’s Plan for the Soul 135
the spirit world for his disciples: ‘‘In my Father’s house there
are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told
you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and
prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you
to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also’’ (John
14:2–3). ‘‘This presumably means that He is about to create
that whole new Nature which will provide the environment or
conditions for His glorified humanity and, in Him, for ours’’
(M: 154).
The Scriptures suggest (conclusive proof is difficult to find)
that this new environment is called Paradise. The promise of
Jesus to the thief on the cross who acknowledged him was,
‘‘Today you will be with me in Paradise’’ (Luke 23:43). And
Paul tells the Corinthians that when he was caught up to the
third Heaven, he was ‘‘caught up into Paradise and heard
things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to
repeat’’ (2 Cor 12:4). (Note: in the Latin and Greek translations of the Old Testament, the Garden of Eden is called
‘‘Paradise.’’ Perhaps the earthly Paradise was a reflection of
the Paradise Christ has prepared in the spirit world.)
In his sermon on the Day of Pentecost, Peter told his listeners that the body of Jesus did not experience corruption in the
grave, nor was his soul abandoned in Hades (Acts 2:25–31; a
fulfillment of Psalm 16:10). Thus Jesus experienced death
as a human being, but unlike us, he triumphed over both
places. ‘‘I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and
I have the keys of Death and of Hades’’ (Rev 1:18.) There are at
least three Biblical passages that describe the effects of that
triumph:
Therefore it is said, ‘‘When he ascended on high he made
captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.’’ (When it
says, ‘‘He ascended,’’ what does it mean but that he had also
descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended
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is the same one who ascended far above all the Heavens, so that
he might fill all things.) (Ephesians 4:8–10)
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the
unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in
the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and
made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times
did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah,
during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight
persons, were saved through water. (1 Peter 3:18–20)
For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the
dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as
everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.
(1 Peter 4:6)
Near the end of The Great Divorce, Lewis directly refers to the
second passage when he has MacDonald say ‘‘there is no spirit
in prison to whom He did not preach’’ (GD: 121). A minor
correction is in order. Most scholars agree ‘‘spirits in prison’’
refers not to human souls as Lewis thought, but to the lustful
angels that came down in Noah’s time, married human
women, taught mankind many dangerous skills, and so corrupted the world that God wiped it out by a flood (Gen 6:1–7,
and many intertestamental Jewish sources such as 1 Enoch).
Peter returns to this theme in his second epistle and tells us
that they are imprisoned in Tartarus, the lowest section of
Hades in ancient mythology. Peter likely meant that Christ
told them that their attempts to corrupt the human race
by intermarriage and so prevent the birth of the promised
redeemer had failed.
At any rate, the third passage does refer to human souls.
Now Peter clearly states that Jesus went to Hades to proclaim
the gospel to deceased humans. Some modern translations
read ‘‘even to those who are now dead,’’ but the word
‘‘now’’ is not in the Greek text. Combining all the texts,
God’s Plan for the Soul 137
Christ’s journey to Hades took him first to the lowest part
where the angels were and are still imprisoned. Then, moving
‘‘upward’’ and ‘‘leading captivity captive,’’ he freed the
human souls from Hades who were willing to go with him
and brought them into Paradise, the place he prepared for
them. Next, the resurrection brought Jesus once again into
time and space as we know them, and Luke tells us he met
with his disciples for a period of forty days, teaching them
about the kingdom of God (Acts 1:3). Then he ascended into
Heaven as they watched, took his place at the right hand of
God, and finally sent the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost,
the event that gave birth to the church.
When I describe the descent of Christ into Hades in class, my
students often point out that in the parable of the Rich Man
and Lazarus, no one was able to pass from one compartment of
Hades to the other, because a vast gulf divided them (Luke
16:26). Lewis was quite aware of this; in fact, he refers to that
gulf as a ‘‘radiant abyss’’ in The Great Divorce. But Lewis would
see the ‘‘geography’’ of the parable as the Biblical way of
teaching about spiritual conditions more than about literal
places. Whether literal or not, the real challenge is to somehow bridge the chasm that separates shrunken human souls
from God. And so, MacDonald tells Lewis, ‘‘Only the Greatest
of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell. For the
higher a thing is, the lower it can descend – a man can sympathize with a horse but a horse cannot sympathize with a rat.
Only one has descended into Hell’’ (GD: 121).
Returning to the first passage, when Paul describes Christ’s
descent in Ephesians 4:9–10, he writes: ‘‘when he ascended . . . he led captives in his train.’’ In other words, some
souls did leave the underworld and ascended with Christ,
probably to Paradise, or the ‘‘outskirts’’ of Heaven; the setting
in which Lewis places most of The Great Divorce. But who left
with Christ? Only those who wanted to, who were willing to
138 God’s Plan for the Soul
embrace Truth himself, Lewis would answer. Perhaps Jesus
was speaking to the Pharisees about his descent, before it
happened in time, but already known in the eternal present,
when he told them that Abraham, whom they respected so
highly, not only wanted to know about Christ, but had indeed
seen ‘‘my day’’ and rejoiced at what he saw (John 8:56).
And, I might add, those who went with Christ to Paradise
shall again accompany him when he returns. As Paul reminds
the Thessalonians, ‘‘God will bring with Jesus those who have
fallen asleep [died] in him’’ (1 Thess 4:14). Thus there is
Biblical support, both direct and indirect, for the historical
Christian belief in the descent of Christ to the underworld
and for some of the dead leaving their chambers in Hades
and ascending with Christ to Paradise.
Applying the Seven Principles
These seven principles are, I believe, the key concepts underlying the theology expressed by Lewis in The Great Divorce, and
he arrived at them from his understanding of the Scriptures.
But how can they all be true when on the one hand, God
wants everyone to be saved, and yet the path to God is only
through Jesus, whose existence is unknown to billions of
humans? Let’s begin on one side of the problem: how does
God feel about our salvation?
Will all be saved?
There are Biblical passages that seem to indicate that some are
chosen by God to know him, which implies others are not.
Other passages like John 3:16 include everyone: ‘‘God so loved
the world’’ and ‘‘whoever believes in Him might have eternal
life.’’ Lewis prefers the more inclusive approach, since it agrees
God’s Plan for the Soul 139
with the promise of Jesus that whoever seeks will surely find.
More support comes from such passages as 1 Timothy 2:4,
which states that God ‘‘desires everyone to be saved and to
come to the knowledge of the truth;’’ and 2 Peter 3:9: God
‘‘is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to
repentance.’’
When we add the omnipotence of God to this view of
salvation, the implication is that all will be saved; this is the
doctrine known as universalism. The logic behind this position
is as follows: God wishes all to be saved, as the Bible affirms,
and if he is all-powerful, and all-knowing, then he is able to
achieve this (and any other) purpose that is consistent with his
nature. Almost since the beginning of Christianity some believers have understood God’s love for us in this way. Carried
to the extreme, a few have even concluded that Satan will
some day return to God.
Universalism is an attractive belief. Who wouldn’t rejoice at
the prospect of an empty Hell, a defeated Satan without a single
human captive after all his efforts, and all humanity finally free
of sin and giving glory to God? God knows what is best for us,
so why shouldn’t he overrule our sinful ‘‘no’’ to him, and lead
us to salvation against our will, knowing that once we have
received salvation and the spiritual sight that comes with it, we
will thank God for overcoming our defiance?
Indeed, Lewis’s own conversion was precisely along these
lines. In Surprised by Joy he describes God’s grace in his life in
terms of the parable of the Great Banquet, in which the master
looking for dinner guests instructed his servant to go out into
the streets and ‘‘compel them to come in’’ (Luke 14:23). And
so the grace of God transformed the ‘‘most dejected and reluctant convert in all England’’ (SBJ: 228–9) into an apologist for
the faith! If God did this for Lewis, why not the same for every
person? Indeed, even George MacDonald, Lewis’s tour guide
in The Great Divorce, was reputed to be a universalist (GD: 121).
140 God’s Plan for the Soul
But the Bible checks us at this point. It teaches that some
will be lost, including the antichrist and the false prophet who
attempt to rule the world at the end of the age, and lost forever
(Rev 20:15). And if perdition will be the final state of some,
this can mean only one thing. When the will and the omnipotence of God encounter human choice, God respects our
choices rather than force salvation upon the beings he has
created with a will separate from his own. Perhaps a case
could be made for the use of divine force, the bitter medicine
that is the only cure for a fatal illness, but Lewis sees things
differently.
In creating beings with free will, omnipotence from the outset
submits to the possibility of such defeat. What you call defeat, I
call miracle: for to make things which are not Itself, and thus to
become, in a sense, capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all the feats we
attribute to the Deity. (PP: 127)
The result is rather paradoxical when we express it from this
perspective: rather than God sending sinners to Hell (or perhaps
even worse, forcing them into Heaven), he finally yields to
their own choice. Lewis even goes so far as to describe Hell as an
expression of God’s mercy, since it is part of his creation and
the most suitable place for those who refuse Heaven. ‘‘God
in his mercy made the fixed pains of Hell’’ (‘‘Divine Justice’’
in P: 98). And so Lewis (reluctantly?) parted ways with
his mentor and tour guide George MacDonald on this point
because he believed Heaven will be too painful for some who
will not unveil.
The second principle also supports the position that physical
death is not the final deciding point. A person of only thirty or
forty years of age may already be beyond the reach of God,
having rejected the work of the Holy Spirit in his life until he is
no longer capable of responding to God. The tender heart of
God’s Plan for the Soul 141
Lucy had compassion for the Dwarfs, but even Aslan was
unable to reach them in the prison they had built for themselves before they died. They are like those who refuse the bus
ride in The Great Divorce: ‘‘First they will not, in the end they
cannot open their hands for gifts, or their mouths for food, or
their eyes to see’’ (GD: 121).
But though freedom is real it is not infinite. Every choice
reduces a little one’s freedom to choose the next time. There
therefore comes a time when the creature is fully built, irrevocably attached either to God or to itself. This irrevocableness is
what we call Heaven or Hell. Every conscious agent is finally
committed in the long run: i.e. it rises above freedom into
willed, but henceforth unalterable, union with God, or else
sinks below freedom into the black fire of self-imprisonment.
(CLII: 585; ‘‘To Joyce Pearce, July 20, 1943)
On the other hand, billions of people have died without ever
hearing the gospel. The strength of Lewis’s position is that the
same principle of choice still applies; how did they respond to
the truth as they were able to understand it in their own
religion, or in the evidence of a Creator as expressed in nature
and the conscience? Only God knows if they will still be open
to the truth when they encounter it after death in Christ, but if
they are, God will reach them because he is not willing that
any should perish.
Is there a second chance?
When my students begin to understand Purgatory as Lewis
explains it, they raise two objections. Why should people who
heard the message while alive but then ignored or rejected it
have a second chance? And if those who never knew that
Christ died for their sins still can be saved, doesn’t this rob
the Great Commission of its urgency? Taking the second
142 God’s Plan for the Soul
objection first, nothing can rob the gospel of its urgency. The
sooner people believe the better. The older we get, Screwtape
would remind us, the more comfortable we feel in this world.
Surrendering to Another becomes increasingly difficult as
habits become set. Also, the Christian life is not just a ‘‘fire
escape’’ but an opportunity to be a transforming influence
in the world. Besides, Jesus told us to go into all the world
with the gospel; no concept of the afterlife can change that
command.
But what about non-believers, and the possibility of a
‘‘second chance’’? For those who have never heard, Purgatory
would be a ‘‘first chance.’’ And why is a second chance so
objectionable? The fact of the matter is that many who live in
countries where the gospel can be openly shared have had
many chances to believe. I myself am the product of a second
chance; I rejected the message of the first person who brought
me the good news of salvation. Divine providence gives us all
many chances as we encounter truth in various forms
throughout life. Saved at the time of death or not, we choose
until we have ‘‘fully built’’ ourselves, with God’s grace, or
without.
Beyond space and time
But when did Christ enter Hades to preach to the dead? When
Lewis asks, ‘‘And will he ever do so again?’’ MacDonald’s reply
(speaking for Lewis) is astonishing: ‘‘It was not once long ago
that He did it. Time does not work that way when once ye
have left the Earth. All moments that have been or shall be
were, or are, present in the moment of His descending. There
is no spirit in prison to whom He did not preach’’ (GD: 121). In
God’s ‘‘unbounded Now’’ (Lewis’s expression in Letter 27 of
SL: 128), they meet Jesus. How they respond to Truth himself
brings them closer and closer to the Eternal, or increases the
God’s Plan for the Soul 143
separation. By opening Purgatory to all with the sixth principle, Lewis disagrees with the Catholic view that only those
who will eventually go to Heaven first pass through Purgatory.
This concept of Purgatory also provides the way out of the
theological corner that has caused so many to struggle with
Christianity. Jesus is still the only way, but now everyone has
a chance to accept him; not just those who were fortunate
enough to live at the right place and time. Lewis upholds
the justice of God; now no one can say ‘‘I never heard.’’
The implications of this are so far-reaching they include all
humanity. For that reason, The Great Divorce may be more
theologically important than anything else Lewis wrote.
The stress Lewis placed upon the importance of the choices
made by the Ghosts should satisfy those who question the
justice and mercy of God. Since we are the product of all of
our moral choices, Lewis concludes that we choose our own
destiny. God doesn’t gleefully send sinners to Hell, he grants
their wishes and only with reluctance. This seems contrary to
the way many people imagine God’s judgment, but Lewis has
Scripture to support him. God declared his feelings in this
matter long ago through Ezekiel: ‘‘I take no pleasure in the
death of the wicked’’ (Eze 33:11). God is not willing that any
should perish, but he will not force people into Heaven. Lewis
rightfully concludes that Hell is the place God has mercifully
created for those who would rather escape reality.
Responding to truth
At this point, one might ask: ‘‘If everyone does have the
opportunity to choose or reject Christ after death, who
would not choose Heaven over Hell, now that spiritual issues
are so much clearer?’’ Who indeed would refuse to leave
Hades and ascend with Christ to Paradise? Well, Lewis shows
in every dialogue and even in the landscape of The Great
144 God’s Plan for the Soul
Divorce what sort of people would reject Heaven. Napoleon
is pacing the floor and blaming everyone else for his problems.
The Episcopal Ghost would rather discuss theology than
exchange it for Truth himself. A poet refuses Heaven when
he learns he has been forgotten on earth. A mother demands
her son back from God whom she blames for his premature
death. They all refuse to allow God to make them ‘‘solid’’ by
killing what needs to die.
But Lewis won’t budge; even the smallest sin causes The
Great Divorce between Heaven and Hell. The reality of Heaven
is too ‘‘big’’ to enter the shrunken, tightly closed souls of the
Grey Town, and the glories of Heaven are unbearable to those
who flee from the truth. Yet even in the Grey Town, God’s
reality can’t be avoided. The souls there are able to construct
houses simply by thinking of them, a symbol of the facades
humans erect (or the veil they put on) to hide from others and
from God. But the rain that never stops comes right through
the houses, serving as a constant reminder of the futility of
escaping reality.
Those who do take the bus ride, who begin to respond to the
preaching of Christ in Hades, experience more suffering as
they see themselves more clearly. During the ride, the bus
expands as it leaves the shrunken edge of Hell and enters the
edge of Heaven. The passengers are (spiritually) stretched so
thin they are like transparent bubbles when they leave the
bus. Now reality is truly overpowering. The grass is painfully
sharp to walk on and Lewis nearly panics when the hardbitten
Ghost reminds him that should it rain, every drop would go
right through him like a bullet (GD: 57).
The Spirits who come to help the Ghosts are also terrifying,
due to their solidity and Heavenly appearance. Things come to
a crisis when the Spirits confront the Ghosts with their faults,
even though they do so with gentle firmness in the service of
Heaven. The Spirits were friends or family or associates down
God’s Plan for the Soul
145
on earth; if Christ himself came, Lewis implies, the terror
would overwhelm the Ghosts. Sure enough, at the very end
of the book, the coming of Christ (who is ultimate reality) is
heralded by rays of light so real they are like solid blocks of
stone (GD: 125). Then, it is too late; the bus stop is closed.
Night comes down below, and dawn finally breaks above.
Lewis screams, for he is also a Ghost, and awakes from his
dream.
The logical application of the seven principles brings Lewis
to the conclusion that how a person responds to the truth as he
is able to understand it, even if he has never heard the gospel
message, is the most important part anyone can play in
the process of sanctification. Some of my more hard-nosed
students object to this, saying ‘‘you’re either right or wrong,
and if you’re wrong God will send you to Hell!’’ And yet some
of those same students listen to the lectures with attentive
minds and sincere hearts, but arrive at different conclusions
and even misunderstandings because they are not able to
grasp accurately everything they hear. Will God ‘‘grade’’ us
according to how much we were able to understand about
him, or according to the condition of our heart? Lewis emphatically chooses the latter: what more can anyone do than
embrace the truth as best as he can understand it? In fact,
having a heart that longs for and welcomes the truth is even
more important than how much the mind can grasp. Paul
agrees, for he writes that we will be judged according to the
intentions of our hearts (1 Cor 4:5), not by some IQ test that
measures our understanding of theology.
Lewis emphasizes the importance of a sincere heart quite
dramatically in The Last Battle through the figure of Emeth,
whose name is Hebrew for faithfulness and truth. Emeth had
been serving Tash, the Satan-like, chief god of the Calormenes,
because he had been deceived by someone he trusted. His
heart was sincere in his search for truth, yet he was completely
146 God’s Plan for the Soul
wrong in his choices. When he finally meets Aslan, Emeth is
greatly discouraged and waits for Aslan to pronounce his
condemnation. But Aslan tells him ‘‘all the service thou hast
done to Tash, I account as service done to me . . . Beloved . . .
unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have
sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly
seek’’ (LB: 165–6).
Emeth represents for Lewis the ‘‘virtuous unbeliever’’
(‘‘Letter to Patricia Thomson’’ in L: 362, December 8, 1941)
who wanted to serve God and thought he was doing so. Untold
millions have been utterly deceived as Emeth was, and/or
limited by their cultural contexts, religions, and leaders. Is
there any hope for them? Lewis believed so because the parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matt 25:31–46) left that door
open. In that parable, Jesus welcomes into eternal life those
Gentiles who served him by helping others in need. They seem
confused, as if they are meeting Jesus for the first time, and ask
how they helped him. Jesus explains, ‘‘As you did it to one of
the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to
me’’ (Matt 25:40). Lewis mentioned this parable at least eight
times, and its more generous view of salvation clearly fascinated him.
I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false
god or to a very imperfectly conceived true God, is accepted by
the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they
know Him. For He is (dimly) present in the good side of the
inferior teachers they follow. In the parable of the Sheep and
the Goats . . . those who are saved do not seem to know that
they have served Christ. (‘‘Letter to Miss Ashton’’ in L: 428,
November 8, 1952)
Lewis did not restrict the parable to our prayers: ‘‘Looking at
the Sheep & Goats every man can be quite sure that every kind
act he does will be accepted by Christ’’ (‘‘Letter to Emily
God’s Plan for the Soul 147
McLay’’ in L: 433, August 3, 1953). But Lewis saw a problem
in this emphasis upon our actions. In the same letter he admits
he is unable to reconcile the ‘‘salvation by works’’ theology of
the parable with Paul’s theology of salvation by faith. The
answer Lewis was searching for comes in the epistle of
James, who understands works as the expression of true faith.
How does this theology of the ‘‘virtuous unbeliever’’ interface with the seven principles Lewis used to form his concept
of Purgatory? The parable does suggest a broader understanding of how everyone will find salvation through Christ, even
those who did not know him during their earthly lives. But
principle four remains in full force: all sin must be removed –
not just forgiven – and new life given to all, before fellowship
with a holy God is possible. The approving words of Jesus in
the parable suggest that the commendable deeds of those who
helped others in need shaped their souls so that they were
receptive to Jesus when they finally did stand before him, and
allowed him to prepare them for Heaven.
Purgatory in Scripture
Does the Bible really support the concept of Purgatory? The
answer is ‘‘no,’’ if one is looking for the word ‘‘Purgatory’’ or a
passage directly dealing with this belief. But Purgatory as
Lewis defined it – moral/spiritual change (for the better) after
death – does have Biblical support. Hebrews 11, the wellknown ‘‘Bible hall of fame,’’ describes a number of people
from Old Testament times who ‘‘through faith’’ accomplished
many great feats. But the last two verses of this chapter tell us
that although they lived and died in faith, they did not receive
what they had been promised. Why? Because ‘‘God had
planned something better for us so that only together with
us would they be made perfect’’ (Heb 11:40). The whole message
148 God’s Plan for the Soul
of Hebrews is that the ‘‘something better’’ is salvation through
Christ. Because they lived before Christ, they died without his
salvation. Yet the author anticipates their salvation; indeed,
their perfection. Since they have already died, their perfection
is only possible through a post-death encounter with Christ.
Have they been perfected? In the next chapter, the author
gives us a glimpse of the spirit world and they are there,
having finally received what their faith anticipated:
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living
God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in
festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are
enrolled in Heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits
of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new
covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word
than the blood of Abel. (Heb 12:22–24)
Summary
Now the full force of the implications of Christ’s descent as
Lewis understands it becomes clear. Since the descent is an
event beyond time as we know it, everyone who has ever lived
reaches the underworld at the same ‘‘time.’’ There, Christ
invites everyone, Christian or not, to leave Hades and journey
with him to Paradise; i.e., to embrace the truth, accept God’s
forgiveness, and enter into fellowship with God. Here (and at
the cross) is the ultimate expression of ‘‘God so loved the
world’’ and ‘‘God is not willing that any should perish.’’
The seven principles of Purgatory not only vindicate the
justice of God, they allow those who have chosen Heaven to
experience fullness of joy. Why? Because they will understand
that no one went to Hell simply because they never heard
the good news. Only those who demand Hell go there. As
MacDonald explains it to Lewis: ‘‘Either the day must come
God’s Plan for the Soul 149
when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer
able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery
can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves’’
(GD: 118). The self-imprisoned will not be able to ‘‘blackmail
the universe’’ (GD: 118).
Finally, we also find here the resolution to the problem of
attempting to reconcile such statements as ‘‘No one comes to
the Father except through me’’ (John 14:6) and ‘‘There is no
other name under Heaven . . . by which we must be saved’’
(Acts 4:12), with the reality that untold millions have never
heard the gospel. Everyone, believer and unbeliever alike, will
encounter Christ after death, and everyone must choose or
reject the truth until conformed to the image of Christ, or until
they have become a person beyond the reach of even the grace
of God. The issue for Lewis is not a ‘‘second chance,’’ but the
grace of God responding to a lifetime (and beyond) of choices.
God is able to complete the process of sanctification. He will
settle for nothing less.
Chapter 7
God’s Plan for the Body –
and the Universe
‘‘The judgment of Narnia.’’
Illustration ß 2007 by Deborah Wilson Camp
God’s Plan for the Body – and the Universe 151
‘‘Further in and higher up!’’
(LB: 154)
But as they came right up to Aslan one or other of two things
happened to each of them. They all looked straight in his face;
I don’t think they had any choice about that. And when some
looked, the expression of their faces changed terribly – it was
fear and hatred; except that, on the faces of Talking Beasts, the
fear and hatred lasted only for a fraction of a second. You could
see that they suddenly ceased to be Talking Beasts. They were
just ordinary animals. And all the creatures who looked at
Aslan that way swerved to their right, his left, and disappeared
into his huge black shadow, which (as you have heard)
streamed away to the left of the doorway. The children never
saw them again. I don’t know what became of them. But the
others looked in the face of Aslan and loved him, though some of
them were very frightened at the same time.
(LB: 153–4, emphasis mine)
Resurrection of the Body
Before we come to the consummation of God’s redemptive
work, let’s review briefly. Lewis believed that as God in the
flesh, Jesus offered up his sinless life on the cross as payment
for the sins of the world. When a person acknowledges his
sinfulness and accepts salvation through Christ, the journey to
perfection (sanctification) begins. It continues, Lewis believed,
after death when Jesus himself entered Hades and brought out
to Paradise those who believe in him. And then, something
happened never before seen ‘‘in the whole history of the
universe . . . He has forced open a door that has been locked
since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and
beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He
has done so. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new
chapter in cosmic history has opened’’ (M: 150).
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But God isn’t finished with us amphibians yet. We’ve considered the changes of the soul in this life and beyond, but
what about our bodies? The redemptive work of Christ, as Paul
reminded the Corinthians (1 Cor 15), includes the physical
body also, so we must not regard it as unimportant. Lewis had
a well-developed theology of the future, and believed all of
creation, not just our bodies, would be transformed by God. In
the same context as the resurrection Lewis also anticipated the
last judgment, when sheep would finally be separated from
goats (Matt 25:31–46, the parable he often cited), glory or
shame revealed, and sin finally exposed and forever banished.
Lewis summarized the predictions of the Bible for believers in
these five promises:
The promises of Scripture may very roughly be reduced to five
heads. It is promised (1) that we shall be with Christ; (2) that
we shall be like Him; (3) with an enormous wealth of imagery,
that we shall have ‘‘glory’’; (4) that we shall, in some sense, be
fed or feasted or entertained; and (5) that we shall have some
sort of official position in the universe – ruling cities, judging
angels, being pillars of God’s temple. (‘‘Weight of Glory’’ in
WG: 34)
The promise of becoming ‘‘like Him’’ must include the resurrection of the body, because Jesus has a resurrected body.
What might become of the physical body when the promise of
the resurrection finally comes to pass? Lewis immediately lays
aside any possibility of the corpse, long since reused by nature,
somehow being brought back into service. St. Paul did not
mean that, he adds (LTM: 121), which shows us that Lewis is
referring to Paul’s description of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. There, Paul defends the belief in a literal resurrection, but also explains that what will be raised up will not be
the same kind of body. ‘‘It is sown a physical body, it is raised a
spiritual body’’ (1 Cor 15:44).
God’s Plan for the Body – and the Universe 153
This ‘‘spiritual’’ body will be immortal, but what will it
actually be like? Paul doesn’t really get into that, other than
saying the resurrection body will ‘‘bear the image of the man
of Heaven’’ (meaning Jesus, 1 Cor 15:49). Lewis believed
resurrected humanity will once again be able to participate
in the material creation even as Jesus did, and so he concluded: ‘‘What the soul cries out for is the resurrection of the
senses. Even in this life matter would be nothing to us if it
were not the source of sensations’’ (LTM: 122).
Resurrection and Creation
Lewis believed this sensuous life of the resurrection body will
be clothed by the soul, whereas in this natural life, the soul is
clothed by the body. Yet even in our natural life, Lewis sees
glimpses of what resurrection life might be like.
At present, if we are reborn in Christ, the spirit in us lives
directly on God; but the mind, and, still more, the body receives
life from Him at a thousand removes – through our ancestors,
through our food, through the elements. The faint, far-off
results of those energies which God’s creative rapture
implanted in matter when He made the worlds are what we
now call physical pleasures; and even thus filtered, they are too
much for our present management. What would it be to taste at
the fountainhead that stream of which even these lower
reaches prove so intoxicating? Yet that, I believe, is what lies
before us. The whole man is to drink joy from the fountain of
joy. As St. Augustine said, the rapture of the saved soul will
‘‘flow over’’ into the glorified body. (‘‘Weight of Glory’’ in
WG: 44)
In that new sphere of existence where the senses have been
restored to us in the glorified body, the world of matter in
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which we once lived will become a much richer part of
our new life. In fact, Lewis predicts, God will accomplish this
enhancement of nature through us. What we perceived and
knew by the physical senses during our earthly life ‘‘became
soul. That element in the soul which it becomes will, in
my view, be raised and glorified; the hills and valleys of
Heaven will be to those you now experience not as a copy
is to an original, nor as a substitute is to the genuine article,
but as the flower to the root, or the diamond to the coal’’
(LTM: 123).
Then the new earth and sky, the same yet not the same as
these, will rise in us as we have risen in Christ. And once again,
after who knows what aeons of the silence and the dark, the
birds will sing and the waters flow, and lights and shadows
move across the hills, and the faces of our friends laugh upon
us with amazed recognition. Guesses, of course, only guesses. If
they are not true, something better will be. For ‘‘we know that
we shall be made like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’’ (LTM:
124. Lewis is quoting 1 John 3:2, but he changes the text from
‘‘we shall be like Him’’ to ‘‘we shall be made like Him,’’ no
doubt wishing to emphasize God’s power that will change us.)
The ‘‘new earth’’ even includes animals (at least some of
them) because they are a part of nature and they have been
taken up into us even more intimately than inanimate matter,
as we discussed in chapter four.
My stuff about animals came long ago in The Problem of Pain. I
ventured the supposal – it could be nothing more – that as we
are raised in Christ, so at least some animals are raised in us.
Who knows, indeed, but that a great deal even of the inanimate
creation is raised in the redeemed souls who have, during this
life, taken its beauty into themselves? That may be the way
in which the ‘‘new Heaven and the new earth’’ are formed.
(LAL: 107, November 26, 1962)
God’s Plan for the Body – and the Universe 155
The personality of tame animals is ‘‘largely the gift of man’’
(PP: 141). If we humans are raised to immortal life by Christ
and our relationship is defined by such Biblical expressions
as ‘‘in Christ’’ and ‘‘Christ in you the hope of glory,’’ then by
analogy, Lewis concludes, animals who become fully
themselves ‘‘in us’’ may likewise share ‘‘in us’’ our new resurrection life. ‘‘As our mere soulhood is reborn to spirituality
in Christ,’’ so ‘‘their mere sentience is reborn to soulhood’’
(PP: 141).
Lewis means that when the quasi-spiritual and emotional
value which human tradition attributes to a beast (such as the
‘‘innocence’’ of the lamb or the heraldic royalty of the lion)
has a real ground in the beast’s nature, and is not merely
arbitrary or accidental, then it is in that capacity, or principally
in that, that the beast may be expected to attend on risen man
and follow after him as part of his ‘‘train’’ (PP: 141–2).
Just how deeply Lewis felt about the future of animals is
revealed in a very moving description of one of the Spirits near
the end of The Great Divorce. Lewis marvels at a woman of
indescribable beauty. On earth, she was a nobody, and yet
now ‘‘she is one of the great ones.’’ MacDonald tells him:
‘‘Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth
are two quite different things’’ (GD: 105). Following the
woman, Sarah Smith of Golders Green, is a train of people
and dozens of animals. MacDonald explains:
‘‘Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her
love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance
of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.’’
I looked at my Teacher in amazement.
‘‘Yes,’’ he said. ‘‘It is like when you throw a stone into a pool,
and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who
knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young,
it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is
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joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder
lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.’’
(GD: 106–7)
Where is Lewis getting these amazing ideas? He has combined
several Scriptures to form a vision of the new age. To the
second promise (‘‘We shall be like Him,’’ taken from 1 John
3:2) he has added the miracles Jesus performed. Some of his
miracles, such as turning water into wine (John 2:1–11) and
feeding large crowds by multiplying loaves of bread and fish
(Matt 15:32–39), reveal what God does every year in nature.
But other miracles have a prophetic significance because they
foretell what God will one day do universally. Next, Lewis
brings Romans 8:18–25 into the discussion, which suggests
our resurrection and glorification will be the means by which
all creation shall be ‘‘set free from its bondage to decay.’’
He raised one man . . . from the dead because He will one day
raise all men from the dead. Perhaps not only men, for there are
hints in the New Testament that all creation will eventually be
rescued from decay, restored to shape and subserve the splendour of re-made humanity. The Transfiguration and the walking on the water are glimpses of the beauty and the effortless
power over all matter which will belong to men when they are
really waked by God. (‘‘Miracles’’ in GID: 32–3)
Even now, and since the worlds were spoken into existence,
Jesus is the One in whom ‘‘all things hold together’’ (Col
1:17). Now warped by sin (which began in Heaven with the
angels, not on earth), the universe may be more difficult than
before to ‘‘manage,’’ just as our fallen world requires more
effort from us. But all creation will be redeemed, set free from
decay, including us, and since God gives us dignity through
meaningful work for him, Lewis expects that resurrected and
glorified humanity will participate in that liberation.
God’s Plan for the Body – and the Universe
157
Judgment by Fire
The Ghosts in The Great Divorce were assisted in the process of
sanctification by the Spirits who came to help them see themselves more honestly, confess their faults, and let God remove
them. When a Ghost allowed that to happen, upward progress
into the heights of Heaven soon removed him from Lewis’s
sight. But Lewis knew that sanctification and glorification
didn’t end in Purgatory; what happens there is meant to prepare us to stand before Christ. ‘‘He shall come again to judge
the quick and the dead,’’ reads the Nicene Creed, and Lewis
took these words to mean the last day will reveal what we
really are.
It will be infallible judgment. If it is favorable we shall have no
fear, if unfavorable, no hope that it is wrong. We shall not only
believe, we shall know, know beyond doubt in every fibre of
our appalled or delighted being, that as the Judge has said, so
we are: neither more nor less nor other. We shall perhaps even
realize that in some dim fashion we could have known it all
along. (‘‘The World’s Last Night’’ in WLN: 113)
Not only will that scrutiny reveal what we truly are, it will
also change us, if there still is need, and our sanctification will
finally be complete. Here is where Lewis’s first two promises
come together. ‘‘We shall be with Him’’ is now completely
true when we stand in his presence, and ‘‘We shall be like
Him’’ will be the result. John made this connection in his first
epistle: ‘‘Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be
has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he
is revealed, we will be like him, because we will see him as he
is’’ (1 John 3:2).
Lewis wisely did not attempt to describe this encounter, but
he did give us a preview of it in The Great Divorce. The man with
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a red lizard on his shoulder that symbolized lust is the only one
in the dream who surrendered to God; the rest found the
divine presence too painful. God’s instrument in this case
was an angel and Lewis reveals what sanctification involves
through his description of the angel. He is so bright that Lewis
can hardly look at him, as bright as ‘‘the morning sun at the
beginning of a tyrannous summer day’’ (GD: 97). Heat as well
as light flow out from the angel, for the glory of God is experienced as fire where sin is present and as light when sin is
removed.
Eager to help, the angel approaches the man, who reacts
with terror ‘‘You’re burning me!’’ The lizard on the man’s
shoulder pleads with him to let it survive, but finally, the
man gives the angel his consent. There is a horrible scream
when the lizard is killed, but soon the man rises from the
ground and stands beside the beautiful horse that appeared
when lust was done away with. The warped love that is lust
has been transformed by God into pure love and now instead
of riding on the man, that love is a vehicle for him to ride into
the heights of Heaven.
The man turned from it [the horse], flung himself at the feet of
the Burning One, and embraced them. When he rose I thought
his face shone with tears, but it may have been only the liquid
love and brightness (one cannot distinguish them in that country) which flowed from him . . . In joyous haste the young man
leaped upon the horse’s back . . . They were off before I well
knew what was happening. There was riding if you like! I
came out as quickly as I could from among the bushes to follow
them with my eyes; but already they were only like a shooting
star far off on the green plain, and soon among the foothills of
the mountains. (GD: 100–1)
The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus gives us a similar
glimpse of Hades, although Paradise is not yet in view. The rich
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159
man asks Abraham to send Lazarus over to him with some
water for his tongue because ‘‘I am in agony in these flames’’
(Luke 16:24). The story ends without revealing how he will
respond when Jesus descends to Hades, but at least he is
more aware of his condition than he was during his life
when he feasted every day while ignoring Lazarus who was
begging for food at his gate. Hopefully, as embarrassment,
shame, and regret over his selfish life burn in his soul like
fire, he will still be able to yield when Truth himself comes
there.
Lewis chose the metaphor of fire because he understood
that the glory of God would appear as light to the pure, but
as fire wherever sin was still present. When Wormwood’s
patient was killed in the war, God appeared to him as ‘‘cool
light,’’ but to Wormwood that same glory was ‘‘blinding, suffocating fire’’ (SL: 148). As usual, Lewis is basing his descriptions on the Scriptures, which tell us ‘‘Our God is a consuming
fire’’ (Heb 12:29), and he makes his angels ‘‘a flame of fire’’
(Heb 1:7), as the lustful man discovered.
Jesus himself said that everyone ‘‘will be salted with fire’’
(Mark 9:49). God intends for his fire to begin its work now,
when believers are baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire
(Matt 3:11). Sanctification continues in Hades as we move
closer to God in Paradise, and reaches its climax when we
stand before God. Paul tells us that ‘‘all of us must appear
before the judgment seat of Christ’’ (2 Cor 5:10), and when
we do,
The work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will
disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will
test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on
the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the
work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will
be saved, but only as through fire. (1 Cor 3:13–15)
160 God’s Plan for the Body – and the Universe
The Face of God
Lewis has yet another perspective on our sanctification and
the ultimate destination of mankind. Wormwood’s patient
saw ‘‘Him,’’ meaning God himself, and Lewis believes that
when the fire of God’s glory has cleansed us, we shall see his
face. The connection between God’s glory and God’s face is
first revealed in the Scriptures when Moses is up on Mount
Sinai. When God tells Moses that he has found favor with him,
Moses makes the best of the positive situation and asks God to
show him his glory. God’s answer is quite revealing: ‘‘I will
make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim
before you the name, ‘The lord’; and I will be gracious to
whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I
will show mercy. But,’’ he said, ‘‘you cannot see my face; for
no one shall see me and live’’ (Exo 33:19–20). Even so, God
did let Moses see his back and just that exposure caused his
face to shine so much that the Israelites were afraid of him
(Exo 34:29–35). Moses had to wear a veil until the glory
subsided; one day, our resurrection bodies will be able to
reflect that glory much longer.
Why can’t Moses – who found favor with God and spoke
with him face to face (meaning not in dreams or visions) – see
God’s face? No one, God says, can see his face/glory and
survive. Why not? Surely the answer is that the full glory of
God would be fatal to us in our present condition. How ironic
that our ultimate destination, the face (¼ presence, the glory)
of God, to be our highest joy, would be fatal to us in our
present condition. The occasional glimpses of that glory confirm God’s refusal to Moses. In the transfiguration, Jesus’s face
became brighter than the sun (Matt 17:2). The same description – brighter than the sun – is used when Saul encounters
Christ on the Damascus road (Acts 26:13).
God’s Plan for the Body – and the Universe
161
Does God have an actual face or this is another example of
attributing human features to God (anthropomorphic
speech)? Theologians don’t agree, but I will observe that just
as we focus on the face to identify a person because the
personality within is expressed there more than anywhere
else in the body, so the divine glory evidently has a focal point.
The experiences of Moses and Saul should remind us that
even in our mortal bodies we are able to endure a fleeting
glimpse of God’s glory, no doubt ‘‘reduced’’ for our sakes. And
in a figurative sense, when we yield ourselves to God we are
‘‘seeing’’ him, if only dimly. In our new bodies, Paul tells us,
we will see God face to face, just as Moses desired. But now,
we must be satisfied to see God ‘‘through a mirror, in an
enigma,’’ as the Greek literally says (1 Cor 13:12).
And yet, even that indirect contact will enable God to sanctify us. In another mirror passage, Paul recalls the veil Moses
had to wear. In contrast to the Israelites who did not want to
see God’s glory on the face of Moses, when people turn to God
the veil is removed. Paul means that when we are open,
honest, and sincere with God, as Orual finally discovered
when she unveiled, ‘‘all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the
glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being
transformed into the same image from one degree of glory
to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit’’ (2 Cor
3:12–18). Could this be the text that inspired Lewis to add to
the myth of Cupid and Psyche by having Orual wear a veil?
The importance of these Biblical passages is that they illuminate the subject of sanctification in a way few theologians
have noticed. Paul tells us that instead of an indistinct reflection
as from a mirror, we shall one day see ‘‘face to face.’’ 1 John 3:2
promises that when we are able to see him as he is, we shall be
like him. And in the 2 Corinthians passage just above, Paul tells
us that now, though we see the glory of God only as reflected in
a mirror, even that is enough to transform us.
162 God’s Plan for the Body – and the Universe
Lewis may have been only an ‘‘armchair theologian,’’ as he
himself would admit, and yet that keen mind fastened on to
this truth that many miss. In Perelandra, Lewis interrupts the
action of the plot to remind us that God’s face – not just God,
but his face – is the ultimate destiny of every human. Ransom
comes upon Weston, now possessed by Satan, as he is mutilating a number of frog-like creatures. To his horror, Weston
looks up at him, and smiles! That smile is so horrible, Ransom
faints at the shock, begins to come to, and faints again!
As he lay there, still unable and perhaps unwilling to rise, it
came into his mind that in certain old philosophers and poets
he had read that the mere sight of the devils was one of the
greatest among the torments of Hell. It had seemed to him till
now merely a quaint fancy. And yet (as he now saw) even the
children knew better: no child would have any difficulty in
understanding that there might be a face the mere beholding
of which was final calamity. The children, the poets, and the
philosophers were right. As there is one Face above all worlds
merely to see which is irrevocable joy, so at the bottom of all
worlds that face is waiting whose sight alone is the misery from
which none who beholds it can recover. And though there
seemed to be, and indeed were, a thousand roads by which a
man could walk through the world, there was not a single one
which did not lead sooner or later either to the Beatific or
Miserific Vision. He himself had, of course, seen only a mask
or faint adumbration of it; even so, he was not quite sure that
he would live. (PER: 96)
This is why Lewis ended Narnia as he did, with Aslan waiting at the door of the stable. All of Narnia’s inhabitants, fleeing
the destruction behind them, had no choice but to encounter
that divine face. That gets to the heart of the matter. No long
lines of billions of people waiting to come before the Judge, no
reviews of our entire lives. The judgment will be simple and
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163
quick: how we have shaped ourselves by all of our decisions,
Lewis reminds us, determines whether that face is a sight of joy
or unbearable terror. Either way, the result will be permanent.
In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of the
universe must be turned upon each of us either with one
expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised
. . . It is written that we shall ‘‘stand before’’ Him, shall appear,
shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost
incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of
us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that
examination, shall find approval, shall please God. (‘‘Weight of
Glory’’ in WG: 39)
Even now, that face is waiting for each person to unveil. The
experience may not be pleasant; having our faults revealed
and then put to death is painful. But God’s face can be endured, since in this life we see it only indirectly as through a
mirror. Will we conceal ourselves like Orual, or choose to live
with God like Psyche? ‘‘Since that contact cannot be avoided
for long, and since it means either bliss or horror, the business
of life is to learn to like it’’ (‘‘Dogma and the Universe’’ in
GID: 47).
Conclusion
The Legacy of Lewis
Did Lewis Pass the Test?
The imagination, wit, and intellect of Lewis have greatly contributed to our understanding of Biblical theology, especially
what the future may hold for us and how we should prepare
for it now. But every occupation, I suppose, has its dangers
and this is certainly true for the theologian. The risk of doing
theology is becoming so engrossed in the details that one
forgets what theology is all about, and many have succumbed
to this risk. I speak as an insider here. Theological books that
cause us to marvel at the miracles of Jesus are now increasingly rare. Journal articles that strengthen our resolve to walk
by faith and resist all the traps Screwtape has for us are few
and far between. Theology has become a cluster of highly
specialized and technical fields; a thought-world where
scholars explore for a lifetime just one country or even one
county of that world.
The dangers of theology may be a strange way to start a
conclusion, but Lewis wrote enough about theology for us to
Conclusion: The Legacy of Lewis
165
regard him as a theologian in his own right. He was quite
aware of his unusual gifts and how they could lead to pride.
Did Lewis manage to avoid this trap? I believe he did. Standing
on the threshold of Heaven, Lewis imagined himself speaking
to George MacDonald, his guide in The Great Divorce. In a
fascinating display of role playing, Lewis uses him to warn
himself! After his mentor described someone who was interested only in survival and therefore rejected Heaven because
everyone had already survived, Lewis finds this account hard
to believe.
‘‘Do ye think so?’’ said the Teacher with a piercing glance.
‘‘It is nearer to such as you than ye think. There have been
men before now who got so interested in proving the existence
of God that they came to care nothing for God himself . . . as
if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist!’’ The sin
Lewis wanted to avoid is the substitution of the means for
the end, and, MacDonald warns him, ‘‘It is the subtlest of all
the snares’’(GD: 71).
As I have shown in this study, Lewis kept our Heavenly
destination in view. He did not forget that theology is really
meant to be a map drawn up by great Christian thinkers before
us; a map based on the truths of the Bible that will guide us
safely through this world and prepare us for the next, even
while ‘‘translating’’ the directions of the map for those who
have not learned its language but wish to follow its path.
Another snare has claimed many great thinkers: the error
that the map will yield its secrets only to a keen mind. There is
much in theology to engage the intellect, but the Source behind
the map intended it to be a guide for everyone. In the time of
Jesus, the rabbis were also map readers and explainers; interpreting the Law of Moses was often their only occupation. The
gospels generally paint a negative picture of them, but in reality, many of them were able to avoid the trap. The entire Law
could be fulfilled by loving God and one’s neighbor, and Jesus
166 Conclusion: The Legacy of Lewis
agreed with them (Luke 10:25–28). And when they looked
around at humanity and asked who was worthy to inherit the
age to come, they generally chose someone like a juggler, who
knew nothing about their precious law, but spent his time
bringing merriment and encouragement to others.
Like some of the rabbis, and like Paul, who counted everything from his past as rubbish (Phil 3:8), Lewis also realized
Heaven did not depend upon his many accomplishments.
When he took the test and asked, in effect, ‘‘who will be
great in the age to come?’’ his answer was Sarah Smith of
Golders Green. Who was she? A nobody on earth. Even the
alliteration of her name seems to convey her commonness.
Why was she so great in Heaven? And why are there so many
people and animals in her train? Because she loved.
‘‘And who are all these young men and women on each side?’’
‘‘They are her sons and daughters.’’
‘‘She must have had a very large family, Sir.’’
‘‘Every young man or boy that met her became her son – even
if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door.
Every girl that met her was her daughter.’’
‘‘Isn’t that a bit hard on their own parents?’’
‘‘No. There are those that steal other people’s children. But her
motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went
back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men
looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her
lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less
true, but truer, to their own wives.’’ (GD: 106)
Yes, she loved. It wasn’t education, but love. Not a professorship at Oxford, or fame, or prestige. She probably never went
to college or traveled very far from her home. But she became
a conduit of God’s love to everyone she met. Yes, Lewis passed
the test, and we can understand why he became a spiritual
mentor for so many. ‘‘I most fully allow that it is of more
Conclusion: The Legacy of Lewis 167
importance for you or me today to refrain from one sneer or to
extend one charitable thought to an enemy than to know all
that angels and archangels know about the mysteries of the
New Creation’’ (M: 168).
The Impact of Lewis
More than a century after his birth, Lewis has become more
popular than ever, though there is a certain irony about the
way it has come about. The young man who set out with great
determination to become a poet is rarely praised for his poetry
today. The Oxford scholar who made significant contributions
to the fields of literary criticism and English literature is not a
major force in those discussions today. But his career as an
‘‘amateur’’ theologian who set out humbly to explain and
defend the Christian faith in his letters, articles, poetry, and
books, best accounts for his continuing success today.
That success has taken many forms and reaches into many
areas of national life, especially in America. The influence of
Lewis is obvious in the writings of many leaders who are
involved in politics, in social and cultural causes, and a variety
of ministries, including prison reform. Lewis has been influential on fantasy and children’s writers, and even the arts. I’ve
personally seen sculptures, song lyrics, and names of music
groups that reflect his writings and I’m sure there are many
more I haven’t seen. Due in large part to The Chronicles of
Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, and Mere Christianity, even his
lesser-known works remain in print, with new editions regularly appearing. Even George MacDonald has been rescued
from obscurity. Thanks to his association with Lewis, his
works have been ‘‘dusted off’’ and published in new editions.
And yet, as I have attempted to show, some of the most
significant aspects of Lewis’s theology are found only in his
168 Conclusion: The Legacy of Lewis
lesser-known works, such as Miracles, The Problem of Pain, Till
We Have Faces, and especially The Great Divorce. Symbolism,
figurative language, complex discussions, and frequent allusions to and borrowings from a tremendous variety of sources,
many from Antiquity, all conspire together to discourage
many would-be readers. This study is written with them particularly in mind. I shall have succeeded if the deeper aspects
of Lewis’s theology are now more accessible, and if the reader
is encouraged to pursue a deeper relationship with God. Lewis
would have wanted it that way.
A Theology of Redemption
It seems in conclusion that the theology of Lewis is centered
around one word: redemption. As a new believer he began to
look around at his world and asked: ‘‘What on earth (pun
intended!) is God up to?’’ The Scriptures gave him the answer
he sought: God has acted and continues to act in human
history to restore his world and his universe to himself. That
‘‘treatment’’ includes us, and when our redemption is complete, he will even use us in his redemptive plans for nature,
Lewis believed. And after this world . . . the sky is the limit!
God hasn’t acted only in our history, but in the spirit world
as well. He has prepared a place there for us; an environment
designed to continue our sanctification. The understanding of
Purgatory is, in my opinion, one of the most important aspects
of Lewis’s theology. His emphasis upon God’s respect for our
choices ‘‘redeems’’ the justice of God and removes the stumbling block so many have found in Christianity’s insistence
that Christ is the only way to God. Everyone has the chance to
choose salvation in Christ, and no one will be lost except those
who reject Heaven.
Conclusion: The Legacy of Lewis 169
Even the story of God becoming man and dying for the
world has in a sense a ‘‘redemptive’’ effect for Lewis, for it
‘‘redeemed’’ the ancient myths by showing them as God-given
preparations for Christ. And there is another, more personal
sense in which God redeems the past; even the pains of the
past. The glories of Heaven will ‘‘work backward,’’ transforming the meaning of the earthly life of each believer. When we
understand how God used our trials and pains to purify us, we
will say ‘‘I was always in Heaven’’ (GD: 67–8). Indeed, Lewis
believed every life experience can bring us closer to God if we
allow him to use them. ‘‘God whispers to us in our pleasures,
speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His
megaphone to rouse a deaf world’’ (PP: 93).
And Lewis urges his readers to let God redeem the present
time. We cannot avoid the face above all worlds, but we can
prepare, ‘‘down here,’’ by our choices and the grace of God, for
the bus ride ‘‘up there’’ to Paradise, and prepare there for that
still ‘‘higher’’ revelation of full glory that will bring us into
eternity with him, finally sharing his glory and serving him in
total freedom.
Who will trust us with the true wealth if we cannot be trusted
even with the wealth that perishes? Who will trust me with a
spiritual body if I cannot control even an earthly body? These
small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as
ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not
that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that
some day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, those
greater mounts, those winged, shining and world-shaking
horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience,
pawing and snorting in the King’s stables. (M: 169)
And they shall see His face. (Rev 22:4)
Bibliography
Adey, Lionel (1998). C. S. Lewis. Writer, Dreamer and Mentor.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Downing, David C. (1992). Planets in Peril. A Critical Study of C. S.
Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy. Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press.
Downing, David C. (2002). The Most Reluctant Convert. C. S.
Lewis’s Journey to Faith. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press.
Ford, Paul F. (1994). Companion to Narnia. San Francisco:
Harper San Francisco.
Foster, Brett (1998). ‘‘An estimation of an admonition: The
nature of value, the value of nature, and The Abolition of
Man. Christian Scholar’s Review, XXVII: 4, Summer, pp. 416–35.
Goffar, Janine (1995). C. S. Lewis Index. Rumours from the
Sculptor’s Shop. Riverside, CA: La Sierra University Press.
Hooper, Walter (1996). C. S. Lewis. A Companion and Guide. San
Francisco: Harper San Francisco.
Hooper, Walter (1998). ‘‘The lectures of C. S. Lewis in the
universities of Oxford and Cambridge.’’ Christian Scholar’s
Review, XXVII: 4, Summer, pp. 436–53.
Bibliography
171
Jacobs, Alan (2005). The Narnian. The Life and Imagination of C. S.
Lewis. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.
Kreeft, Peter (1994). C. S. Lewis for the Third Millennium. Six
Essays on The Abolition of Man. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
Sayers, Dorothy L., J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, etc. (1978).
Essays Presented to Charles Williams. C. S. Lewis, ed. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans.
Schaeffer, Francis A. (1976). The God Who is There. Speaking
Historic Christianity into the Twentieth Century. Downers
Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press.
Index
Abel 148
Abraham 138, 159
Acts, book of 59, 135, 137,
149, 160
Adam
of earth 57, 66, 77–8, 87, 96
of Perelandra 70
affection 117–18
Africa 120
Alexander the Great 109
animal(s) 2, 7, 9, 16, 23, 33, 63–4,
67, 80, 82–97, 151, 154–6
beaver(s) 7, 57
Bultitude (Ransom’s bear)
91, 93
cat(s) 86; Pinch (Ransom’s cat)
91
dinosaur, see Lewis, Clive
Staples: as dinosaur
dog(s) 86, 92; Tartar 89
dragon 33
faun 25, 59
frogs 91, 162
horse 8, 137, 158, 169
lion(s) 7, 12, 25–6, 57–60,
62, 64–6, 71–2, 82, 130, 155;
see also Aslan
lizard, red (lust) 132, 158
mice 61–2, 91
Sheep and the Goats, parable
of 146–7, 152
angel(s) 2, 7, 9, 48–52, 66, 70,
80, 84, 98–104, 129, 156,
158, 167
Archangels 103, 167;
Gabriel 49–50, 103;
Michael 49–50
Cherubim 103
devils/fallen angels 7, 38,
48–50, 55, 85, 91–3, 98–102,
Index 173
124, 128, 162; Satan/Devil/
Beelzebul/Macrobes 7,
48–51, 52–5, 59–64, 66, 74–5,
79, 87, 91–2, 94, 98–102, 139;
Screwtape 4, 13, 85, 99–101,
142, 164; Triptweze 4;
Wormwood 4, 99–100,
159–60
Dominations 103
eldils 52
Powers 103
Principalities 103
Seraphim 103
Thrones 103
Virtues 103
Anglican 5
Antichrist 50–1, 55, 140
Apostles’ Creed 129
Apuleius (Lucius Apuleius
Platonicus) 107–8
Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass)
107–9
Aquinas, Thomas
Summa Theologica 42
Aristotle 35, 42, 109
Nichomachean Ethics 35
Ascension (of Christ) 70–1
Aslan 7, 25, 57–66, 71, 82–3,
123, 128–30, 140–1, 146,
151, 162
atonement, see redemption
Augustine, Saint 153
Babel, Tower of 93
Babylonian exile 49
Bardia 110–12
Barfield, Owen 21, 30
beatific vision 70–1, 160–3
Beelzebul, see angel(s): devils/
fallen angels (Satan)
Belbury 92–3
Belsen (Wynyard school) 17
Bible, Scriptures 2–3, 5, 8, 10,
13, 23, 26, 28–31, 40, 46–51,
58–65, 66–71, 96–7, 98,
126–7, 129–30, 138, 147–8,
155–62, 165, 168
King James translation 30
Bios (natural life) 76–9
Cage, John 37
Calormenes 145
Cambridge
address, see Lewis, C. S., works:
Selected Literary Essays
University 41, 43, 46–7
Cana 45–6
Canaan 97
Carmarthen (Wales) 5
Catholic(s) 101, 126–7, 143
Cézanne, Paul 37
Chesterton, G. K.
The Everlasting Man 20
Chronicles, book of Second 62
Chronicles of Narnia, see Lewis,
C. S., works
Coghill, Nevill 21
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 34
Colossians, book of 63, 156
Commission, The Great 141–2
Connor, Sarah 125
Copernicus 42
Corinthians, book of First 145,
151–3, 159, 161
174 Index
Corinthians, book of Second 63,
129, 133, 135, 159, 161
Cosser 92
Creation 3, 7, 9, 11, 57, 72, 81–2,
84–8, 94–6, 98–9, 104, 140,
151–4, 156, 167
of Narnia 82–3
Cupid (god), see myth
Dachau 94
Damascus Road 160
Daniel, seer 49–50
book of 49–50
Dante (Dante Alighieri) 130
Commedia/Divine Comedy 130
Darwin, Charles 82
David, king and psalmist 79
Debussy, Claude 37
Deep Magic 57, 60, 62
devils, see angel(s): devils/fallen
angels
Deuteronomy, book of 97
Devine, Dick (Feverstone)
52–3, 89, 92
Digory, Lord 128
Downing, Robert
The Most Reluctant Convert 20
dwarfs 61, 123, 140–1
Edmund Pevensie 15, 33, 57,
59–60, 65, 104, 106
eldil (angel), see angel(s)
Emeth 145–6
Endicott, Lizzie 16
English literature 1–2, 10, 13,
18, 22, 33, 85, 167
Enoch, book of First 136
Ephesians, book of 59, 64,
135–7
Episcopal Ghost 144
Eustace (Eustace Clarence
Scrubb) 33, 36
Eve
of Earth 57, 66, 69, 77, 87,
96, 112, 119
of Venus, see Tinidril
evolution 23, 43, 82, 87, 94
theistic 83–4
Exodus, book of 160
Ezekiel, book of 143
false prophet 51
Feverstone, see Devine, Dick
Filostrato, Professor 51
Fisher, John 128
Ford, Paul 62
Companion to Narnia 62
Foster, Brett
‘‘An Estimation of an
Admonition’’ 41
Fox, the 109, 111–12, 115–16,
118, 120
Frost, Professor 38–9
Garden of Eden 48, 66, 77–8,
87–8, 96, 112, 119, 135
Garden of Gethsemane 58, 60,
66–8, 71, 79
Gauguin, Paul 37
Genesis, book of 49, 69–70, 87,
96, 136
Glome, kingdom of 113–14,
120
Gnosticism 78
Index 175
Goffar, Janine 86
The C. S. Lewis Index 86
Golders Green 155, 166
Graham, Billy 12
Great Banquet, parable of 139
Grand Canyon 35
‘‘Great Divide, The,’’ see Lewis,
C. S., works: Selected Literary
Essays (‘‘De Descriptione
Temporum’’)
Great War/conflict, the 55, 104
Greece/Greek classics 8, 18, 20,
109
Greek philosophy 78, 118
‘‘Green Book,’’ the, see King, Alex
Gresham, Douglas 2, 15
Gresham, Joy Davidman 13, 24
Grey Town, see spirit world:
Purgatory
Grumbling Ghost 152
Hades, see spirit world
Hardbitten Ghost 123, 144
Harry 52, 89
Heaven, see spirit world
heavenly Jerusalem, see
Jerusalem
Hebrews, book of 28, 39, 103,
118, 125, 147–8, 159
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich 37
Hell, see spirit world
Herodotus 6, 62
Hiroshima 94
Holy Spirit 69, 137, 140, 159
Hooper, Walter 16, 18–19,
26, 41
C. S. Lewis: A Companion and
Guide, 18–19, 41
Incarnation, the 11, 30, 72, 84,
124, 134
Isaiah, book of 61, 64
Israel 50, 62, 73, 96
Jacobs, Alan
The Narnian 36
James, book of 147
Jeremiah, book of 49
Jerusalem 58–63, 67
heavenly 148
temple of 63
Jesus Christ 2, 7, 12, 21, 24, 26,
30–1, 38–9, 45–7, 51, 57–66,
75–80, 118–19, 165, 169
descent of 148–59
John
apostle 51, 67
gospel of 59, 61, 65, 67, 69,
73, 102, 135, 138, 149, 156
letter of First 154, 156–7, 161
John, pilgrim 44
Judas, apostle 59, 67, 79
Judgment, the Last 157–8
Jupiter (god) 108
justification 125
Ketley, Martin, see King, Alex
Kierkegaard, Søren 37
King, Alex and Martin Ketley
The Control of Language: A
Critical Approach to Reading
and Writing (the ‘‘Green
Book’’) 34–7, 40–1, 55
176 Index
Kirkpatrick, W. T. (‘‘The Great
Knock’’) 18–20, 48
Last Supper 38, 58, 60
Lazarus 38, 159
Leavis, F. R. 41
Leviticus, book of 96–7
Lewis, Albert 16–7
Lewis, Clive Staples (Jack)
Anglican 129
apologist/translator 5–6,
10–12, 23, 26–30, 43, 139
atheist 18–21
as dinosaur 8, 43, 72
evangelist 12–13, 23, 24–7,
31, 58
mentor 10–13, 22–3, 30–1
old Western man 8, 43
professor of English Language
and Literature 13, 15–16,
19, 22; Cambridge 23,
41–5; Oxford 19, 21, 25
prophet 23–4, 31
Ransom 88–90
theologian 164, 167
visitor to Hades and
Paradise 123–4
Lewis, C. S., works
The Abolition of Man 23, 33–7,
50, 55
Boxen 16
Christian Reflections 36, 47;
‘‘Christianity and
Culture’’ 47; ‘‘Christianity
and Literature’’ 47;
‘‘The Poison of
Subjectivism’’ 36
Chronicles of Narnia 3, 7–8,
12, 15, 25, 57–9, 167;
The Horse and His Boy 8;
The Last Battle 123, 129,
145–6, 151, 162; The Lion,
the Witch and the
Wardrobe 12, 25–6, 57–66,
71, 106, 130; The Magician’s
Nephew 82–3; The Voyage of
the Dawn Treader 33
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis.
Books, Broadcasts, and the
War, Vol. II: 1931–1949:
’’Letter to Mr. Lyell’’ 84;
‘‘Letter to Joyce Pearce’’
141
The Four Loves 30, 117, 119
God in the Dock: Essays on
Theology and Ethics 23, 26,
28; ‘‘Answers to
Christianity’’ 12;
‘‘Christian Apologetics’’ 6,
120; ‘‘Dogma and the
Universe’’ 163; ‘‘God in
the Dock’’ 28;
‘‘Miracles’’ 45–6, 62, 156;
‘‘On the Reading of Old
Books’’ 6; ‘‘The Pains of
Animals’’ 87; ‘‘Rejoinder
to Dr. Pittenger’’ 12;
‘‘Vivisection’’ 88, 94;
‘‘Work and Prayer’’ 88;
‘‘Xmas and Christmas’’ 6–7
The Great Divorce 31, 58, 119,
123–4, 127, 130–4, 136–7,
139, 141–5, 149, 155–8,
165–6, 168–9
Index
A Grief Observed 127
Letters to An American
Lady 85, 86, 154
Letters of C. S. Lewis 95;
‘‘Letter to Miss Ashton’’
146; ‘‘Letter to Mrs. Hook’’
66; ‘‘Letter to Clyde
S. Kilby’’ 117; ‘‘Letter to
Emily McLay’’ 146–7;
‘‘Letter to Sister
Penelope’’ 83; ‘‘Letter to
Patricia Thomson’’ 146;
‘‘Letter to Wendell
W. Watters’’ 5
Letters to Malcomb, Chiefly on
Prayer 11, 13, 30, 86, 98,
128, 152–4
Mere Christianity 9, 12, 25–30,
44, 58, 71–80, 84, 95, 99,
126, 132–4, 167
Miracles: A Preliminary
Study 29–30, 72–3, 107,
135, 151, 166–9
Of Other Worlds: ‘‘It All Began
With a Picture’’ 25
Out of the Silent Planet
(Mars) 3, 7, 12, 25, 48,
52–5, 66, 89–90
Perelandra (Venus) 7, 12,
25–6, 48, 58, 66–72, 91–2,
96, 102, 130, 162
The Pilgrim’s Regress 44–5
Poems: ‘‘Divine Justice’’ 140;
‘‘Eden’s Courtesy’’ 86;
‘‘On Being Human’’ 104;
‘‘Wormwood’’ 99
177
The Problem of Pain 23, 83–4,
87, 95, 140, 154–5, 168–9
Reflections on the Psalms 30, 40
Selected Literary Essays:
‘‘De Descriptione
Temporum’’ (Lewis’s
inaugural Cambridge
address, also known as
‘‘The Great Divide’’) 8,
23, 36, 41–7, 55
The Screwtape Letters 4–5, 7,
13, 30, 51, 55, 85, 99–103,
125, 142, 159, 167;
‘‘Screwtape Proposes a
Toast’’ 100–2
Studies in Medieval and
Renaissance Literature:
‘‘Imagination and
Thought’’ 103
Surprised by Joy 9–10, 16,
20–2, 30, 139
That Hideous Strength 12, 25,
37–40, 48–51, 66, 91–3
Till We Have Faces 24–5, 108–21,
168
Weight of Glory and Other Essays:
‘‘Is Theology Poetry?’’ 15;
‘‘Weight of Glory’’ 129,
152–3, 163
The World’s Last Night and Other
Essays 23, 157; ‘‘The
World’s Last Night’’ 157
Lewis, Flora (Hamilton) 16–17
Lewis, Warren (Warnie) 16,
18, 21
London 15
178 Index
Lucy Pevensie 15, 33, 60–5,
104, 106, 123, 140–1
Luke, gospel of 59–60, 62–4,
103, 132, 135, 137, 139,
158–9, 165–6
MacDonald, George 20, 130,
132–4, 136–7, 139–40, 142,
148, 155, 165, 167
Phantastes 20, 130
machine(s) 37, 43, 53, 125
MacPhee 48
Macrobe/fallen angel, see
angel(s): devils/fallen
angels
Magdalene College
(Oxford U.) 19
Malcomb 13
Maledil (God) 55, 67
Mark, gospel of 68, 159
Mary, mother of Jesus 103
Mary Magdalene 62–3
‘‘Materialist Magician’’ 51
Matthew, gospel of 58–61,
65, 67, 69–70, 117, 133,
146, 152, 156, 159–60
Merlin (Ambrosius) 93
miracle(s) 2, 11, 29–30,
45–6, 50, 62, 83, 140,
156, 164, 168
Miserific Vision 162
Moore, Edward ‘‘Paddy’’ 19
Moore, Janie 19
Moore, Maureen 19
Moral Law 9, 26–30, 73–4, 77
More, Thomas 128
Moses 96, 160–1
Law of (Torah) 44, 62–3,
96–7, 165–6
myth, mythology 11–12, 22,
24–5, 44–5, 48, 57, 65,
71–2, 78, 107, 169
Bible/Christianity as 24,
57, 73
Cupid and Psyche, marriage
of 24, 107–21, 161, 163
Greek 10, 44
Norse 9–10
Roman 10, 44
Napoleon (Bonaparte) 144
Narnia 33, 106, 128–9, 162
National Institute for Coordinated
Experiments (NICE) 38–40,
48–51, 92–3
Niatirb (Britain spelled
backwards) 6
Nicene Creed 157
Noah 136
Nuremburg Trials 50
Objective Room 38–40, 50
objective value 35–6
Orual 24–5, 109–21, 161, 163
Oxford University 16, 18–21,
25, 52, 166–7
Oyarsa (angel) 52–5, 89
Pan (god) 108
Paradise, see spirit world
Paul (Saul), apostle 3, 62, 129,
133, 135–8, 145, 147,
152–3, 159–61, 166
Penelope, Sister 83
Index 179
Pentecost, Day of 135, 137
Persephone (goddess) 108, 115
Peter, apostle 59, 65, 135–6
Peter, book of First 67, 135–6
Peter, book of Second 139
Peter Pevensie 15, 65, 104, 128
Pharisees 64, 138
Philip (King of Macedonia) 109
Philippians, book of 166
philosophy/philosopher(s) 10,
22, 30, 37, 162
Greek 78, 118
pillar room 114, 119
Plato 30, 129
Pontius Pilate 60–1
post-Christian (Europe) 8, 10, 22
Professor, the 15, 106
prophet, false 51, 140
Protestant(s) 101, 126–7
Protoeuangelion (‘‘First Gospel’’)
69–70
Psalm(s), book of 30–1, 40, 79
Psalms 16 135
Psyche, see myth
Purgatory, see spirit world
Queen, the (White Witch of
Narnia) 7, 12, 25–6,
57–66, 71–2, 104, 130
Ransom, Elwin 3, 7, 25, 48,
52–4, 66–71, 89–93, 96,
130, 162
Ransom Trilogy/Space Trilogy,
see Lewis, C. S., works: Out
of the Silent Planet; Perelandra;
That Hideous Strength
redemption/salvation/
atonement 2–3, 8, 21–5,
57–75, 76–9, 84, 104, 124–5,
127, 129, 132, 134, 138–49,
151–3
of nature, 3, 88, 153–6, 168–9
Redival 109
Reese, Kyle 125
reincarnation 77
resurrection 2, 11, 29, 45,
58–9, 61–5, 69–72, 93, 95–6,
127, 130, 132, 134, 137,
151–6, 160
Revelation, book of 49–51, 59,
65, 70, 132, 135, 140, 169
Rich Man and Lazarus, parable
of 132, 137, 158–9
Romans, book of 156
Rome/Roman Empire 8, 41
Roman classics 8, 18, 20, 109
Royal Military Academy
(Sandhurst) 18
Royal Society 42
Rumblebuffin, Giant 64
salvation, see redemption
sanctification/transformation
79, 84, 124–8, 131–3, 145–9,
151, 157–61, 168
principles of 131–4
Satan, see angel(s): devils/fallen
angels
Saul, see Paul, apostle
Schaeffer, Francis 36–7
L’Abri Fellowship 37
The God Who is There 37
Schwarzenegger, Arnold 125
180 Index
Screwtape, see angel(s): devils/
fallen angels
Second Coming 11, 145
Sehnsucht 121
Sennacherib 62
Sermon on the Mount 133
‘‘Shadow Lands’’ 128
Sinai, Mount 160
Smith, Sarah 155–6, 166
Socrates 114
soul 2, 118
spirit world 128–9, 134–8, 168
Hades/underworld 31, 59,
64–5, 69–71, 128, 130,
134–8, 142–4, 148, 151,
158–9; Keys of 59, 135;
Tartarus 136
Heaven(s) 9, 70–1, 93, 104,
119, 123–4, 128–9, 131–7,
140–1, 143–4, 147–9, 153–4,
156–8, 165–6, 168–9
Hell 4, 9, 100, 124, 129–31,
133, 137, 139–45, 148, 162
Paradise 129–30, 134–8, 143,
148, 151, 158–9, 169
Purgatory/Grey Town 31,
126–34, 141–4, 147–8, 157,
168; theology of 126, 128,
131–4, 141–5, 147–8
Sheol, Gates of 65, 130
Stable, the 123, 162; King’s
stables 169
stone table 60–3
Studdock, Mark 37–40, 92
Studdock, Jane 37, 39
Styx, river 108
subjectivism 36, 40–1, 50
Sumer 46
Susan Pevensie 15, 60–5, 104, 106
Tao/The Way 36, 73
Tartarus, see spirit world: Hades
Tash 123, 145–6
Tempter’s Training College
100–1
Terminator (film) 125
theistic evolution, see evolution
Thessalonians, book of First
138
Third Reich 94
Tiberias, Sea of 65
Timothy, book of First 139
Tinidril (the Lady, the Eve of
Perelandra) 48, 66–70,
91, 94
Tolkien, J. R. R. 25, 57
‘‘On Fairy Stories’’ (Essays
Presented to Charles Williams,
edited by C. S. Lewis) 72
Tor (the Adam of Perelandra) 96
Torah, see Moses: Law of
Traherne, Thomas 35
Centuries of Meditations 35
Transfiguration, the (of Jesus)
156, 160
Triptweze, see angel(s): devils/
fallen angels
Turkish Delight 104
Ungit 109, 114, 120, 130
United States 37
universalism 139–40
Index 181
Unman, see Weston, Edward
Rolles
Van Gogh, Vincent 37
Venus, see Perelandra
Venus (goddess of love)
107–8, 113
Virgil (Publius Virgilius Maro)
130
virtues
cardinal 95
Christian 95
vivisection 88–93
waterfall 34–5
Wedenshaw 89
Weston, Edward Rolles (the
Unman) 52–5, 66–71,
89–91, 102, 130, 162
Whipsnade Zoo 21
White Witch, the, see Queen
Wither, John 38, 48, 93
World War I 19
World War II 4, 15, 94, 99
Wormwood, see angel(s): devils/
fallen angels
Wynyard 17
Zephyrus (god of the west
wind) 110
Zion, Mount 148
Zoe (spiritual life) 76–9